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GIFT   OF 
A.   P.   Morrison 


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http://www.archive.org/details/enjoyrnentofartOOnoyerich 


THE  ENJOYMENT  OF  ART 


THE    ENJOYMENT 
OF  ART 


BY 


CARLETON   NOYES 


TOUT 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

(Cfje  litas'ibe  press,  Cambridge 
1903 


K*)M35 


COPYRIGHT,   1903,  BY  CARLETON  NOYES 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published,  March,  iqoj 


GIFT  OF 


To 
ROBERT  HENRI 

AND 

VAN  D.  PERRINE 


m9M36 


This  day  before  dawn  I  ascended  a  hill  and  look'd  at 

the  crowded  heaven, 
And  I  said  to  my  spirit  When  we  become  the  enfolders  of 

those  orbs,  and  the  pleasure  and  knowledge  of  every 

thing  in  them,  shall  we  be  filFd  and  satisfied  then  ? 
And  my  spirit  said  No,  we  but  level  that  lift  to  pass  and 

continue  beyond, 

Walt  Whitman 


PREFACE 

The  following  pages  are  the  answer  to 
questions  which  a  young  man  asked  him- 
self when,  fresh  from  the  university,  he 
found  himself  adrift  in  the  great  galleries 
of  Europe.  As  he  stood  helpless  and  con- 
fused in  the  presence  of  the  visible  expres- 
sions of  the  spirit  of  man  in  so  many  ages 
and  so  many  lands,  one  question  recurred 
insistently :  Why  are  these  pictures  ? 
What  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  striving 
after  expression  ?  What  was  the  aim  of 
these  men  who  have  left  their  record  here  ? 
What  was  their  moving  impulse  ?  Why, 
why  does  the  human  spirit  seek  to  mani- 
fest itself  in  forms  which  we  call  beautiful? 


He  turned  to  histories  of  art  and  to  bio- 
graphies of  artists,  but  he  found  no  answer 
to  the  "Why?"  The  philosophers  with 
their  theories  of  aesthetics  helped  him  little 
to  understand  the  dignity  and  force  of  this 
portrait  or  the  beauty  of  that  landscape. 
In  the  conversation  of  his  artist  friends 
there  was  no  enlightenment,  for  they  talked 
about  "  values  "  and  "  planes  of  model- 
ing "  and  the  mysteries  of  "tone."  At  last 
he  turned  in  upon  himself:  What  does 
this  canvas  mean  to  me?  And  here  he 
found  his  answer.  This  work  of  art  is 
the  revelation  to  me  of  a  fuller  beauty,  a 
deeper  harmony,  than  I  have  ever  seen  or 
felt.  The  artist  is  he  who  has  experienced 
this  new  wonder  in  nature  and  who  wants 
to  communicate  his  joy,  in  concrete  forms, 
to  his  fellow  men. 


[xi] 
The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  set  forth 
in  simple,  untechnical  fashion  the  nature 
and  the  meaning  of  a  work  of  art.  Al- 
though the  illustrations  of  the  underlying 
principles  are  drawn  mainly  from  pictures, 
yet  the  conclusions  apply  equally  to  books 
and  to  music.  It  is  true  that  the  manifesta- 
tions of  the  art-impulse  are  innumerable, 
embracing  not  only  painting,  sculpture, 
literature,  music,  and  architecture,  but  also 
the  handiwork  of  the  craftsman  in  the  de- 
signing of  a  rug  or  in  the  fashioning  of  a  cup 
or  a  candlestick ;  it  is  true  that  each  art 
has  its  special  province  and  function,  and 
that  each  is  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  ex- 
pression of  a  certain  order  of  emotion  or 
idea,  and  that  the  distinctions  between  one 
art  and  another  are  not  to  be  inconsider- 
ately swept  aside  or  obscured.     Yet  art  is 


[xii] 

one.  It  is  possible,  without  confusing  the 
individual  characteristics  essential  to  each, 
to  discuss  these  principles  under  the  com- 
prehensive rubric  of  Art. 

The  attempt  is  made  here  to  reduce  the 
supposed  mysteries  of  art  discussion  to  the 
basis  of  practical,  every-day  intelligence 
and  common  sense.  What  the  ordinary 
man  who  feels  himself  in  any  way  attracted 
towards  art  needs  is  not  more  and  con- 
stantly more  pictures  to  look  at,  not  added 
lore  about  them,  not  further  knowledge  of 
the  men  and  the  times  that  have  produced 
them;  but  rather  what  he  needs  is  some 
understanding  of  what  the  artist  has  aimed 
to  express,  and,  as  reinforcing  that  under- 
standing, the  capacity  rightly  to  appreciate 
and  enjoy. 

It  is  hoped  that  in  this  book  the  artist 


[  xiii  ] 

may  find  expressed  with  simplicity  and 
justice  his  own  highest  aims ;  and  that  the 
appreciator  and  the  layman  may  gain  some 
insight  into  the  meaning  of  art  expression, 
and  that  they  may  be  helped  a  little  on 
their  way  to  the  enjoyment  of  art. 

Harvard  College,  December  tenth,  ig02. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  The  Picture  and  the  Man  i 

II.  The  Work  of  Art  as  Symbol    .         .  i9 

III.  The  Work  of  Art  as  Beautiful           .  41 

IV.  Art  and  Appreciation       ...  67 
V.  The  Artist 86 


THE  ENJOYMENT  OF  ART 


THE  PICTURE  AND  THE  MAN 

j 

At  any  exhibition  of  paintings,  more  par- 
ticularly at  some  public  gallery  or  museum, 
one  can  hardly  fail  to  reflect  that  an  inter- 
est in  pictures  is  unmistakably  widespread. 
People  are  there  in  considerable  numbers, 
and  what  is  more  striking,  they  seem  to 
represent  every  station  and  walk  in  life.  It 
is  evident  that  pictures,  as  exhibited  to  the 
public,  are  not  the  cult  of  an  initiated  few; 
their  appeal  is  manifestly  to  no  one  class  ; 
and  this  popular  interest  is  as  genuine  as  it 
is  extended. 

Thus  reflectively  scanning  the  crowd, 
the  observer  asks  himself :  What  has  at- 


[a] 

tracted  these  numbers  to  that  which  might 
be  supposed  not  to  be  understood  of  the 
many  ?  And  what  are  the  pictures  that  in 
general  draw  the  popular  attention  ? 

A  few  persons  have  of  course  drifted 
ifito  th0  |exih^ition  out  of  curiosity  or  from 
lack  of  something  better  to  do.  So  much 
is  evident  at  once,  for  these  file  past  the 
walls  listlessly,  seldom  stopping,  and  then 
but  to  glance  at  those  pictures  which  are 
most  obviously  like  the  familiar  object 
they  pretend  to  represent, — such  as  the 
bowl  of  flowers  which  the  beholder  can 
almost  smell,  the  theatre-checks  and  five- 
dollar  note  pasted  on  a  wall  which  tempt 
him  to  finger  them,  or  the  panel  of  game 
birds  which  puzzles  him  to  determine 
whether  the  birds  are  real  or  not.  These 
visitors,  however,  are  not  the  most  numer- 
ous. With  the  great  majority  it  is  not 
enough  that  the  picture  be  a  clever  piece 
of  imitation  or  illusion  :  transferring  their 


[3] 

interest  from  the  mere  execution,  they  de- 
mand further  that  the  subjects  represented 
shall  be  pleasing.  The  crowd  pause  be- 
fore a  sunny  landscape,  with  cows  stand- 
ing by  the  shaded  pool ;  they  gather  about 
the  brilliant  portrait  of  a  woman  splen- 
didly arrayed,  —  a  favorite  actress  or  a 
social  celebrity ;  they  linger  before  a  group 
of  children  wading  in  a  brook,  or  a  dog 
crouching  mournfully  by  an  empty  cradle. 
At  length,  with  an  approving  and  sympa- 
thetic word  of  comment,  they  pass  on  to 
the  next  pleasing  picture.  Some  canvases, 
not  the  most  popular  ones,  are  yet  not  with- 
out their  interest  for  a  few ;  these  visitors 
are  taking  things  a  little  more  seriously ; 
they  do  not  try  to  see  every  picture,  they 
do  not  hurry ;  they  seem  to  be  considering 
the  canvas  immediately  before  them  with 
concentrated  attention. 

No  one  of  all  these  people  is  insensible 
to  the  appeal  of  the  picturesque :  their  pre- 


[4] 
sence  at  the  exhibition  is  evidence  of  that. 
In  life  they  like  to  see  a  bowl  of  flowers, 
a  sunny  landscape,  a  beautiful  woman  in 
beautiful  surroundings  ;  and  naturally  they 
are  interested  in  that  which  represents  and 
recalls  the  reality.  At  once  it  is  plain, 
however,  that  to  different  individuals  the 
various  pictures  appeal  in  different  measure 
and  for  differing  reasons.  To  one  the  very 
fact  of  representation  is  a  mystery  and  fas- 
cination. To  another  the  important  thing 
is  the  subject ;  the  picture  must  represent 
what  he  likes  in  nature  or  in  life.  To  a 
third  the  subject  itself  is  of  less  concern 
than  what  the  painter  wanted  to  say  about 
it :  the  artist  saw  a  beauty  manifested  by 
an  ugly  beggar,  perhaps,  and  he  wanted  to 
show  that  beauty  to  his  fellows,  who  could 
not  perceive  it  for  themselves. 

The  special  interest  in  pictures  of  each 
of  these  three  men  is  not  without  its  war- 
rant in  experience.     What  man  is  wholly 


[5] 

indifferent  to  the  display  of  human  skill  ? 
Who  is  there  without  his  store  of  pleasur- 
able associations,  who  is  not  stirred  by  any 
call  which  rouses  them  into  play  ?  What 
lover  of  beauty  is  not  ever  awake  to  the 
revelation  of  new  beauty  ?  Indeed,  upon 
these  three  principles  together,  though  in 
varying  proportion,  depends  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  a  great  work  of  art. 

As  the  lover  of  pictures  looks  back  over 
the  period  of  his  conscious  interest  in  ex- 
hibitions and  galleries,  it  is  not  improbable 
that  his  earliest  memories  attach  them- 
selves to  those  paintings  which  most  closely 
resembled  the  object  represented.  He  re- 
members the  great  wonder  which  he  felt 
that  a  man  with  mere  paint  and  canvas 
could  so  reproduce  the  reality  of  nature.  So 
it  is  that  those  paintings  which  are  perhaps 
the  first  to  attract  the  man  who  feels  an 
interest  in  pictures  awakening  are  such  as 
display  most  obviously  the  painter's  skill. 


[6] 

Whatever  the  subject  imitated,  the  fasci- 
nation remains ;  that  such  illusion  is  pos- 
sible at  all  is  the  mystery  and  the  delight. 
But  as  his  interest  in  pictures  grows  with 
indulgence,  as  his  experience  widens,  the 
beholder  becomes  gradually  aware  that  he 
is  making  a  larger  demand.  After  the  first 
shock  of  pleasurable  surprise  is  worn  away, 
he  finds  that  the  repeated  exhibition  of  the 
painter's  dexterity  ceases  to  satisfy  him ; 
these  clever  pieces  of  deception  manifest  a 
wearying  sameness,  after  all ;  and  the  be- 
holder begins  now  to  look  for  something 
more  than  mere  expertness.  Thinking  on 
his  experience,  he  concludes  that  the  sub- 
jects which  can  be  imitated  deceptively  are 
limited  in  range  and  interest ;  he  has  a 
vague,  disquieting  sense  that  somehow  these 
pictures  do  not  mean  anything.  Yet  he  is 
puzzled.  Art  aims  to  represent,  he  tells 
himself,  and  it  should  follow  that  the  best 
art  is  that  which  represents  most  closely 


[7] 
and  exactly.  He  recalls,  perhaps,  the  le- 
gend of  the  two  Greek  painters,  one  with 
his  picture  of  the  fruit  which  the  birds  flew 
down  to  peck  at,  the  other  with  his  paint- 
ing of  a  veil  which  deceived  his  very  rival. 
The  imitative  or  "illusionist"  picture  pleads 
its  case  most  plausibly.  A  further  experi- 
ence of  such  pictures,  however,  fails  to  bring 
the  beholder  beyond  his  simple  admiration 
of  the  painter's  skill ;  and  that  skill,  he 
comes  gradually  to  realize,  does  not  differ 
essentially  from  the  adroitness  of  the  jug- 
gler who  keeps  a  billiard  ball,  a  chair,  and 
a  silk  handkerchief  rotating  from  hand  to 
hand. 

Conscious,  then,  of  a  new  demand,  of  an 
added  interest  to  be  satisfied,  the  amateur 
of  pictures  turns  from  the  imitative  can- 
vas to  those  paintings  which  appeal  more 
widely  to  his  familiar  experience.  Justly, 
he  does  not  here  forgo  altogether  his  de- 
light in  the  painter's  cunning  of  hand,  only 


[8] 
he  requires  further  that  the  subjects  repre- 
sented shall  be  pleasing.  It  must  be  a  sub- 
ject whose  meaning  he  can  recognize  at 
once :  a  handsome  or  a  strong  portrait,  a 
familiar  landscape,  some  little  incident 
which  tells  its  own  story.  The  spectator 
is  now  attracted  by  those  pictures  which 
rouse  a  train  of  agreeable  associations.  He 
stops  before  a  canvas  representing  a  bit  of 
rocky  coast,  with  the  ocean  tumbling  in 
exhilaratingly.  He  recognizes  the  subject 
and  finds  it  pleasing;  then  he  wonders 
where  the  picture  was  painted.  Turning 
to  his  catalogue,  he  reads  :  "37.  On  the 
Coast  of  Maine."  "  Oh,  yes,"  he  says  to 
himself,  "  I  was  on  the  coast  of  Maine 
last  summer,  and  I  remember  what  a  glo- 
rious time  I  had  sitting  on  the  rocks  of  an 
afternoon,  with  some  book  or  other  which 
the  ocean  was  too  fine  to  let  me  read.  I 
like  that  picture."  If  the  title  had  read 
"  Massachusetts  Coast,"  it  is  to  be  feared 


[9] 
he  would  not  have  liked  the  canvas  quite 
so  well.  The  next  picture  which  he  no- 
tices shows,  perhaps,  a  stately  woman  sump- 
tuously attired.  It  is  with  a  slight  shock 
of  disappointment  that  the  visitor  finds  re- 
corded in  his  catalogue  :  "41.  Portrait  of 
a  Lady."  He  could  see  that  much  for  him- 
self. He  hoped  it  was  going  to  be  the 
painter's  mother  or  somebody's  wife,  —  a 
person  he  ought  to  know  about.  But  the 
pictures  which  appeal  to  him  most  surely 
are  those  which  tell  some  little  story, — 
"The Lovers,"  "  The  Boy  leaving  Home," 
"The  Wreck."  Here  the  subject,  touch- 
ing some  one  of  the  big  human  emotions, 
to  which  no  man  is  wholly  insensible,  calls 
out  the  response  of  immediate  interest  and 
sympathy.  It  is  something  which  he  can 
understand. 

At  length  there  comes  a  day  when  the 
visitor  stops  before  a  landscape  which  seems 
to  him  more  beautiful  than  anything  he  has 


[  to] 
ever  seen  in  nature ;  or  some  portrait  dis- 
closes a  strength  of  character  or  radiates  a 
charm  of  personality  which  he  has  seldom 
met  with  in  life.  Whence  comes  this 
beauty,  this  strength,  this  graciousness  ? 
Can  it  be  that  the  painter  has  seen  a  new 
wonder  in  nature,  a  new  significance  in 
human  life  ?  The  spectator's  previous  ex- 
perience of  pictures  has  familiarized  him  in 
some  measure  with  the  means  of  expres- 
sion which  the  painter  employs.  More 
sensitive  now  to  the  appeal  of  color  and 
form,  he  sees  that  what  the  artist  cares  to 
present  on  his  canvas  is  just  his  peculiar 
sense  of  the  beauty  in  the  world,  a  beauty 
that  is  best  symbolized  and  made  manifest 
through  the  medium  of  color  and  form. 
Before  he  understood  this  eloquent  lan- 
guage which  the  painter  speaks,  he  misin- 
terpreted those  pictures  whose  significance 
he  mistook  to  be  literary  and  not  pictorial. 
He  early  liked  the  narrative  picture  because 


[ » ] 

here  was  a  subject  he  could  understand; 
he  could  rephrase  it  in  his  own  terms,  he 
could  retell  the  story  to  himself  in  words. 
Now  words  are  the  means  of  expression 
of  every-day  life.  Because  of  this  fact,  the 
art  which  employs  words  as  its  medium 
is  the  art  which  comes  nearest  to  being 
universally  understood,  namely,  literature. 
The  other  arts  use  each  a  medium  which 
it  requires  a  special  training  to  under- 
stand. Without  some  sense  of  the  expres- 
siveness of  color,  line,  form,  and  sounds, 
—  a  sense  which  can  be  cultivated,  —  one 
is  necessarily  unable  to  grasp  the  full  and 
true  meaning  of  picture,  statue,  or  musical 
composition.  One  must  realize  further  that 
the  artist  thinks  and  feels  in  his  peculiar 
medium ;  his  special  meaning  is  conceived 
and  expressed  in  color  or  form  or  sound. 
The  task  of  the  appreciator,  correspond- 
ingly, is  to  receive  the  artist's  message  in 
the  same  terms  in  which  it  was  conceived. 


[  12] 

The  tendency  is  inevitable,  however,  to 
translate  the  meaning  of  the  work  into 
words,  the  terms  in  which  men  commonly 
phrase  their  experience.  A  parallel  ten- 
dency is  manifest  in  one's  efforts  to  learn 
a  foreign  language.  The  English  student 
of  French  at  first  thinks  in  English  and 
laboriously  translates  phrase  for  phrase  into 
French;  and  in  hearing  or  reading  the 
foreign  language,  he  translates  the  origi- 
nal, word  for  word,  into  his  native  tongue 
before  he  can  understand  its  sense :  he 
has  mastered  the  language  only  when 
he  has  reached  that  point  where  English  is 
no  longer  present  to  his  consciousness :  he 
thinks  in  French  and  understands  in  French. 
Similarly,  to  translate  the  message  of  any 
art  into  terms  that  are  foreign  to  it,  to 
phrase  the  meaning  of  music  or  painting, 
for  example,  in  words,  is  to  fail  of  its  essen- 
tial, true  significance.  The  import  of  music 
is  musical ;  the  meaning  of  pictures  is  not 


[  i3] 
literary  but  pictorial.  In  the  understand- 
ing of  this  truth,  then,  the  spectator  pene- 
trates to  the  artist's  real  intention ;  and  he 
becomes  aware  that  when  he  used  the  pic- 
ture as  the  peg  whereon  to  hang  his  own 
reflections  and  ideas,  he  missed  the  mean- 
ing of  the  artist's  work.  "  As  I  look  at 
this  canvas,"  he  tells  himself,  "  it  is  not 
what  I  know  of  the  coast  of  Maine  that  is 
of  concern,  but  what  the  painter  has  seen 
and  felt  of  its  beauty  and  wants  to  reveal 
to  me."  Able  at  last  to  interpret  the  paint- 
er's medium,  the  appreciator  comes  to  seek 
in  pictures  not  primarily  an  exhibition  of 
the  craftsman's  skill,  not  even  a  recall  of 
his  own  pleasurable  experiences,  but  rather, 
beyond  all  this,  a  fuller  visible  revelation 
of  beauty. 

The  essential  significance  of  art,  that  art 
is  revelation,  is  illustrated  not  only  by  paint- 
ing but  by  the  other  arts  as  well.  In  music, 
to  take  but  a  single  example,  are  present 


[  H] 
the  same  elements  that  constitute  the  appeal 
of  pictures, — skill  in  the  rendering,  a  cer- 
tain correspondence  with  experience,  and 
the  power  of  imaginative  interpretation  of 
the  facts  of  life.  The  music-hall  performer 
who  wins  the  loudest  and  heartiest  applause 
is  he  who  does  the  greatest  number  of  pyro- 
technic, wonderful  things  on  the  piano,  or 
holds  a  high  note  on  the  cornet  for  the  long- 
est time.  His  success,  as  with  the  painter 
whose  aim  is  to  create  illusion,  rests  upon 
men's  instinctive  admiration  for  the  exhibi- 
tion of  skill.  Again,  as  the  imitative  picture 
involves  not  only  the  display  of  dexterity, 
but  also  likeness  to  the  thing  represented 
and  the  consequent  possibility  of  recogniz- 
ing it  immediately,  so  in  the  domain  of  music 
there  is  an  order  of  composition  which  seems 
to  aim  at  imitation, — the  so-called  "descrip- 
tive" music.  A  popular  audience  is  de- 
lighted with  the  "Cats'  Serenade,"  executed 
on  the  violins  with  overwhelming  likeness 


[  -5] 
to  the  reality,  or  with  the  "Day  in  the 
Country/'  in  which  the  sun  rises  in  the 
high  notes,  cocks  crow,  horses  rattle  down 
the  road,  merrymakers  frolic  on  the  green, 
clouds  come  up  in  the  horns,  lightning  plays 
in  the  violins,  thunder  crashes  in  the  drums 
and  cymbals,  the  merrymakers  scatter  in 
the  whole  orchestra,  the  storm  passes  di- 
minuendo, and  in  the  muted  violins  the  full 
moon  rises  serenely  into  a  twilight  sky. 
Here  the  intention  is  easily  understood ;  the 
layman  cannot  fail  to  recognize  what  the 
composer  wanted  to  say.  And  as  in  the  case 
of  pictures  which  interest  the  beholder  be- 
cause he  can  translate  their  subject  into  the 
terms  which  are  his  own  medium  of  ex- 
pression, that  is,  words,  so  with  descriptive 
music,  broadly  speaking,  the  interest  and 
significance  is  literary  and  not  musical. 
Still  another  parallel  is  presented.  Just  as 
those  pictures  are  popular  whose  subjects 
lie  within  the  range  of  familiar  experience, 


[  i6] 

such  as  cows  by  the  shaded  pool,  or  chil- 
dren playing,  or  whose  subjects  touch  the 
feelings ;  so,  that  music  is  popular  which 
is  phrased  in  obvious  and  familiar  rhythms 
such  as  the  march  and  the  waltz,  or  which 
appeals  readily  and  unmistakably  to  sen- 
timent and  emotion.  It  is  after  the  lover 
of  music  has  traversed  these  passages  of 
musical  expression  and  has  proved  their 
limitations  that  he  comes  to  seek  in  music 
new  ranges  of  experience,  unguessed-at 
possibilities  of  feeling,  which  the  composer 
has  himself  sounded  and  which  he  would 
communicate  to  others.  He  is  truly  the 
artist  only  as  he  leads  his  auditors  into 
regions  of  beautiful  living  which  they  alone 
and  of  themselves  had  not  penetrated.  For 
it  is  then  that  his  work  reveals. 

Only  such  pictures,  too,  willliave  a  vital 
meaning  as  reveal.  The  imitative  and  the 
iterative  alike,  that  which  adds  nothing  to 
the  object  and  that  which  adds  nothing  to  the 


[17] 
experience  of  the  beholder,  though  once 
pleasing,  now  fail  to  satisfy.  The  apprecia- 
tor  calls  for  something  fuller.  He  wants  to 
pass  beyond  the  object,  beyond  his  expe- 
rience of  it,  into  the  realm  of  illumination 
whither  the  true  artist  would  lead  him.  The 
development  of  appreciation,  as  the  amateur 
has  come  to  realize  in  his  own  person,  is 
only  the  enlargement  of  demand.  The  ap- 
preciator  requires  ever  fresh  revelations  of 
beauty.  He  discovers,  too,  that  in  practice 
the  tendency  of  his  development  is  in  the 
direction  of  exclusion.  As  he  goes  on,  he 
cares  for  fewer  and  fewer  things,  because 
those  works  which  can  minister  to  his  ever- 
expanding  desire  of  beauty  must  needs  be 
less  numerous.  But  these  make  up  in  large- 
ness of  utterance,  in  the  intensity  of  their 
message,  what  they  lack  in  numbers.  Nor 
does  this  outcome  make  against  a  fancied 
catholicity  of  taste.  The  true  appreciator 
still  sees  in  his  earlier  loves  something  that 


[  i8  ] 

is  good,  and  he  values  the  good  the  more 
justly  that  he  sees  it  now  in  its  right  rela- 
tion and  apprehends  its  real  significance. 
As  each  in  its  turn  led  him  to  seek  further, 
each  became  an  instrument  in  his  develop- 
ment. For  himself  he  has  need  of  them  no 
longer.  But  far  from  contemning  them,  he 
is  rightly  grateful  for  the  solace  they  have 
afforded,  as  by  them  he  has  made  his  way 
up  into  the  fuller  meaning  of  art. 


II 

THE    WORK    OF    ART    AS    SYMBOL 

In  the  experience  of  the  man  who  feels  him- 
self attracted  to  pictures  and  who  studies 
them  intelligently  and  with  sympathy,  there 
comes  a  day  when  suddenly  a  canvas  reveals 
to  him  a  new  beauty  in  nature  or  in  life. 
Much  seeing  and  much  thinking,  much  be- 
wilderment and  some  disappointment,  have 
taught  him  that  in  the  appreciation  of  pic- 
tures the  question  at  issue  is  not,  how  clev- 
erly has  the  painter  imitated  his  object,  is 
not,  how  suggestive  is  the  subject  of  pleas- 
ing associations ;  he  need  simply  ask  him- 
self, "  What  has  the  artist  conceived  or  felt 
in  the  presence  of  this  landscape,  this  ar- 
rangement of  line  and  color,  this  human 


face,  that  I  have  not  seen  and  felt,  and  that 
he  wants  to  communicate  to  me  ? " 

The  incident  of  the  single  canvas,  which 
by  its  illuminating  revealment  first  disclosed 
to  the  observer  the  true  significance  of  pic- 
tures, is  typical  of  the  whole  scope  of  art. 
The  mission  of  art  is  to  reveal.  It  is  the 
prophet's  message  to  his  fellow  men,  the 
apocalypse  of  the  seer.  The  artist  is  he 
to  whom  is  vouchsafed  a  special  apprehen- 
sion of  beauty.  He  has  the  eye  to  see,  the 
temperament  to  feel,  the  imagination  to  in- 
terpret ;  it  is  by  virtue  of  these  capacities, 
this  high,  transfiguring  vision,  that  he  is  an 
artist ;  and  his  skill  of  hand,  his  equipment 
with  the  means  of  expression,  is  incidental 
to  the  great  fact  that  he  has  somewhat  to 
express  that  the  common  man  has  not.  To 
his  work,  the  manifestation  of  his  spirit  in 
material  form,  his  perception  made  sensible, 
is  accorded  the  name  of  art. 

Art  is  expression.     It  is  not  a  display  of 


t«  ] 

skill ;  it  is  not  the  reproduction  of  external 
forms  or  appearances ;  it  does  not  even,  as 
some  say,  exist  for  itself:  it  is  a  message,  a 
means.  To  cry  "  Art  for  Art's  sake ! "  is  to 
converse  with  the  echo.  Such  a  definition 
but  moves  in  a  circle,  and  doubles  upon 
itself.  No ;  art  is  for  the  artist's  sake. 
The  artist  is  the  agent  or  human  instru- 
ment whereby  the  supreme  harmony,  which 
is  beauty,  is  manifested  to  men.  Art  is  the 
medium  by  which  the  artist  communicates 
himself  to  his  fellows ;  and  the  individual 
work  is  the  expression  of  what  the  artist 
felt  or  thought,  as  at  the  moment  some  new 
aspect  of  the  universal  harmony  was  re- 
vealed to  his  apprehension.  Art  is  emotion 
objectified,  but  the  object  is  subordinated 
to  the  emotion  as  means  is  to  an  end.  The 
material  result  is  not  the  final  significance, 
but  what  of  spiritual  meaning  or  beauty 
the  artist  desired  to  convey.  Not  what  is 
painted,  as  the  layman  thinks,  not  how  it 


[«] 

is  painted,  as  the  technician  considers,  but 
why  did  the  artist  paint  it,  is  the  question 
which  sums  up  the  truth  about  art.  The 
appreciator  need  simply  ask,  What  is  the 
beauty,  what  the  idea,  which  the  artist  is 
striving  to  reveal  by  these  symbols  of  color 
and  form  ?  He  understands  that  the  import 
of  the  work  is  the  idea,  and  that  the  work 
itself  is  beautiful  because  it  symbolizes  a 
beautiful  idea ;  its  significance  is  spiritual. 
The  function  of  art,  then,  is  through  the 
medium  of  concrete,  material  symbols  to 
reveal  to  men  whatever  of  beauty  has  been 
disclosed  to  the  artist's  more  penetrating 
vision. 

In  order  to  seize  the  real  meaning  of  art 
it  is  necessary  to  strip  the  word  beauty  of 
all  the  wrappings  of  customary  associations 
and  the  accretions  of  tradition  and  habit. 
As  the  word  is  current  in  ordinary  parlance, 
the  attribute  of  beauty  is  ascribed  to  that 
which  is  pleasing,  pretty,  graceful,  comely ; 


[*3] 

in  fine,  to  that  which  is  purely  agree- 
able. But  surely  such  is  not  the  beauty 
which  Rembrandt  saw  in  the  filthy,  loath- 
some beggar.  To  Rembrandt  the  beggar 
was  expressive  of  some  force  or  manifes- 
tation of  the  supreme  universal  life,  wherein 
all  things  work  together  to  a  perfect  har- 
mony. Beauty  is  the  essential  quality  be- 
longing to  energy,  character,  significance. 
A  merely  agreeable  object  is  not  beautiful 
unless  it  is  expressive  of  a  meaning ;  what- 
ever, on  the  other  hand,  is  expressive  of 
a  meaning,  however  shocking  it  may  be 
in  itself,  however  much  it  may  fail  to  con- 
form to  conventional  standards,  is  beautiful. 
Beauty  does  not  reside  in  the  object.  No ; 
it  is  the  artist's  sense  of  the  great  meaning 
of  things ;  and  in  proportion  as  he  finds  that 
meaning  —  the  qualities  of  energy,  force, 
aspiration,  life  —  manifest  and  expressed 
in  objects  do  those  objects  become  beautiful. 
Such  was  the  conception  of  beauty  Keats 


[»4] 

had  when  he  wrote  in  a  letter :  "  What  the 
Imagination  seizes  as  Beauty  must  be  Truth, 
—  whether  it  existed  before  or  not,  —  for 
I  have  the  same  idea  of  all  our  passions  as 
of  Love :  they  are  all,  in  their  sublime,  crea- 
tive of  essential  Beauty/'  And  similarly: 
"  I  can  never  feel  certain  of  any  truth,  but 
from  a  clear  perception  of  its  Beauty/ '  In 
his  verse  he  sings :  — 

"'Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,' — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

When  it  is  said  here,  then,  that  the  artist 
sees  beauty  in  nature,  the  phrase  may  be 
understood  as  a  convenient  but  inexact  for- 
mula, as  when  one  says  the  sun  rises  or 
the  sun  sets.  Beauty  is  in  the  landscape 
only  in  the  sense  that  these  material  forms 
express  for  the  artist  an  idea  he  has  con- 
ceived of  some  aspect  of  the  universal  life. 
The  artist  is  impelled  to  embody  con- 
cretely his  perception  of  beauty,  and  so  to 


[*|] 

communicate  his  emotion,  because  the  emo- 
tion wakened  by  the  perception  of  new 
harmony  in  things  is  most  fully  possessed 
and  enjoyed  as  it  comes  to  expression. 
Thus  to  make  real  his  ideal  and  find  the 
expression  of  himself  is  the  artist's  supreme 
happiness.  A  familiar  illustration  of  the 
twin  need  and  delight  of  expression  may 
be  found  in  the  handiwork  produced  in  the 
old  days  when  every  artisan  was  an  artist. 
It  may  be,  perhaps,  a  key  which  some 
craftsman  of  Nuremberg  fashioned.  In 
the  making  of  it  he  was  not  content  to  stop 
with  the  key  which  would  unlock  the  door 
or  the  chest.  It  was  his  key,  the  work  of 
his  hands ;  and  he  wrought  upon  it  lovingly, 
devotedly,  and  made  it  beautiful,  finding  in 
his  work  the  expression  of  his  thought  or 
feeling ;  it  was  the  realization  for  that  mo- 
ment of  his  ideal.  His  sense  of  pleasure 
in  the  making  of  it  prompted  the  care  he 
bestowed  upon  it ;  his  delight  was  in  crea- 


[26] 

tion,  in  rendering  actual  a  new  beauty 
which  it  was  given  him  to  conceive. 

In  its  origin  as  a  work  of  art  the  key 
does  not  differ  from  a  landscape  by  Inness, 
an  "  arrangement "  by  Whistler,  a  portrait 
by  Sargent.  The  artist,  whether  craftsman 
or  painter,  is  deeply  stirred  by  some  passage 
in  his  experience,  a  fair  object  or  a  true 
thought :  it  is  the  imperious  demand  of  his 
nature,  as  it  is  his  supreme  pleasure,  to  give 
his  feeling  expression.  The  form  which 
his  expression  takes — it  may  be  key  or  car- 
pet, it  may  be  statue,  picture,  poem,  sym- 
phony, or  cathedral  —  is  that  which  most 
closely  responds  to  his  idea,  the  form  which 
most  truly  manifests  and  represents  it. 

All  art,  as  the  expression  of  the  artist's 
idea,  is  in  a  certain  definite  sense  represen- 
tative. Not  that  all  art  reproduces  an  ex- 
ternal reality,  as  it  is  said  that  painting  or 
literature  represents  and  music  does  not; 
but  every  work  of  art,  in  painting,  poetry, 


music,  or  in  the  handiwork  of  the  craftsman, 
represents  in  that  it  is  the  symbol  of  the  cre- 
ator's ideal.  To  be  sure,  the  painter  or 
sculptor  or  dramatist  draws  his  symbols 
from  already  existing  material  forms,  and 
these  symbols  are  like  objects  in  a  sense  in 
which  music  is  not.  But  line  and  color  and 
the  life  of  man,  apart  from  this  resemblance 
to  external  reality,  are  representative  or 
symbolic  of  the  artist's  idea  precisely  as  the 
craftsman's  key,  the  designer's  pattern,  or 
the  musician's  symphony.  The  beautifully 
wrought  key,  the  geometric  pattern  of  ori- 
ental rug  or  hanging,  the  embroidered  folia- 
tion on  priestly  vestment,  are  works  of  art 
equally  with  the  landscape,  the  statue,  the 
drama,  or  the  symphony,  in  that  they  are 
one  and  all  the  sensuous  manifestation  of 
some  new  beauty  spiritually  conceived. 

The  symbolic  character  of  a  work  of  art 
must  not  be  lost  from  sight,  for  it  is  the 
clue  to  the  interpretation  of  pictures,  as  it  is 


[a*  ] 

of  all  art.  The  painter  feels  his  way  through 
the  gamut  of  his  palette  to  a  harmony  of 
color  just  as  truly  as  the  musician  summons 
the  notes  of  his  scale  and  marshals  them 
into  accord.  The  painter  is  moved  by  some 
sweep  of  landscape ;  it  wakens  in  him  an 
emotion.  When  he  sets  himself  to  express 
his  emotion  in  the  special  medium  with  which 
he  works,  he  represents  by  pigment  the  ex- 
ternal aspect  of  the  landscape,  yes ;  but  not 
in  order  to  imitate  it  or  reproduce  it:  he 
represents  the  landscape  because  the  colors 
and  the  forms  which  he  registers  upon  the 
canvas  express  for  him  the  emotions  roused 
by  those  colors  and  those  forms  in  nature. 
He  does  not  try  to  match  his  grays  with 
nature's  grays,  but  this  nuance  which  he 
gropes  for  on  his  palette,  and  having  found 
it,  touches  upon  his  canvas,  expresses  for  him 
what  that  particular  gray  in  nature  made 
him  feel.  His  one  compelling  purpose  is  in 
all  fidelity  and  singleness  of  aim  to  "  trans- 


late  the  impression  received."  The  painter's 
medium  is  just  as  symbolic  as  the  notes  of 
the  musician's  nocturne  or  the  words  of  the 
poet's  sonnet,  equally  inspired  by  the  hour 
and  place.  Color  and  line  and  form,  although 
they  happen  to  be  the  properties  of  things, 
have  a  value  for  the  emotions  as  truly  as  mu- 
sical sounds :  they  are  the  outward  symbol 
of  the  inward  thought  or  feeling,  the  visible 
bodying  forth  of  the  immaterial  idea. 

The  symbolic  character  of  the  material 
world  is  not  early  apprehended.  In  superfi- 
cial reaction  upon  life,  men  do  not  readily 
pass  beyond  the  immediate  actuality.  That 
the  spiritual  meaning  of  all  things  is  not  per- 
ceived, that  all  things  are  not  seen  to  be 
beautiful,  or  expressive  of  the  supreme  har- 
mony, is  due  to  men's  limited  powers  of 
sight  and  feeling.  Therefore  is  it  that  the 
artist  is  given  in  order  that  he  may  reveal  as 
yet  unrealized  spiritual  relations,  or  new 
beauty.    The  workaday  world  with  its  bur- 


[3°] 
den  of  exigent  « realities  "  has  need  of  a 
Carlyleto  declare  that  things  are  but  a  won- 
derful metaphor  and  the  physical  universe 
is  the  garment  of  the  living  God.  In  the 
realm  of  thought  an  Emerson,  seer  of  tran- 
scendent vision,  must  come  to  restore  his  fel- 
lows to  their  birthright,  which  is  the  life  of 
the  spirit.  As  in  life,  so  in  art  men  do  not 
easily  pass  the  obvious  and  immediate.  The 
child  reads  "Gulliver's  Travels"  or  " The 
Pilgrim's  Progress  "  for  the  story.  As  his  ex- 
perience of  life  both  widens  and  deepens,  he 
is  able  to  see  through  externals,  and  he  pene- 
trates to  the  real  significance,  of  which  the 
narrative  is  but  the  symbol.  So  it  is  with  an 
insight  born  of  experience  that  the  lover  of 
art  sees  no  longer  the  "subject,"  but  the 
beauty  which  the  subject  is  meant  to  sym- 
bolize. 

In  the  universal,  all-embracing  constitu- 
tion of  things,  nothing  is  without  its  signifi- 
cance. To  be  aware  that  everything  has  a 
meaning  is  necessary  to  the  understanding 


[3i  ] 
of  art,  as  indeed  of  life  itself.  That  meaning, 
which  things  symbolize  and  express,  it  can- 
not be  said  too  often,  is  not  necessarily  to  be 
phrased  in  words.  It  is  a  meaning  for  the 
spirit.  A  straight  line  affects  one  differently 
from  a  curve;  that  is,  each  kind  of  line 
means  something.  Every  line  in  the  face 
utters  the  character  behind  it;  every  move- 
ment of  the  body  is  eloquent  of  the  man's 
whole  being.  "  The  expression  of  the  face 
balks  account,"  says  Walt  Whitman, 

"  But  the  expression  of  a  well-made  man  ap- 
pears not  only  in  his  face, 
It  is  in  his  limbs  and  joints  also,  it  is  curiously 

in  the  joints  of  his  hips  and  wrists, 
It  is  in  his  walk,  the  carriage  of  his  neck,  the 

flex  of  his  waist  and  knees,  dress  does  not 

hide  him, 
The  strong  sweet  quality  he  has  strikes  through 

the  cotton  and  broadcloth, 
To  see  him  pass  conveys  as  much  as  the  best 

poem,  perhaps  more, 
You  linger  to  see  his  back,  and  the  back  of  his 

neck  and  shoulder-side." 


[3*] 

Crimson  rouses  a  feeling  different  from  that 
roused  by  yellow,  and  gray  wakens  a  mood 
different  from  either.  In  considering  this 
symbolic  character  of  colors  it  is  necessary 
to  distinguish  between  their  value  for  the 
emotions  and  merely  literary  associations. 
That  white  stands  for  purity  or  blue  for 
fidelity  is  a  conventionalized  and  attached 
conception.  But  the  pleasure  which  a  man 
has  in  some  colors  or  his  dislike  for  others 
depends  upon  the  effect  each  color  has  upon 
his  emotions,  and  this  effect  determines  for 
him  the  symbolic  value  of  the  color.  In 
the  same  way  sounds  are  symbolic  in  that 
they  affect  the  emotions  apart  from  associ- 
ated "thoughts."  Even  with  a  person  who 
has  no  technical  knowledge  of  music,  the 
effect  of  the  minor  key  is  unmistakably 
different  from  the  major.  The  tones  and 
modulations  of  the  voice,  quite  apart  from 
the  words  uttered,  have  an  emotional  value 
and  significance.     Everything,  line,  form, 


l33l 
gesture,  movement,  color,  sound,  all  the 
material  world,  is  expressive.  All  objec- 
tive forms  have  their  meaning,  and  rightly 
perceived  are,  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
word  is  used  here,  beautiful,  in  that  they 
represent  or  symbolize  a  spiritual  idea. 

Thus  it  is  that  beauty  is  not  in  the  ob- 
ject but  in  man's  sense  of  the  object's  sym- 
bolic expressiveness.  The  amateur  may 
be  rapt  by  some  artist's  "  quality  of  color." 
But  it  is  probable  that  in  the  act  of  laying 
on  his  pigment,  the  artist  was  not  thinking 
of  his  "quality"  at  all,  but,  rapt  himself 
by  the  perception  of  the  supreme  harmony 
at  that  moment  newly  revealed  to  his  sense, 
he  was  striving  sincerely  and  directly  to 
give  his  feeling  its  faithfullest  expression. 
His  color  is  beautiful  because  his  idea  was 
beautiful.  The  expression  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  thought ;  it  is  the  thought, 
but  the  thought  embodied.  "  Coleridge," 
says  Carlyle,  "remarks  very  pertinently 


[34] 
somewhere  that  whenever  you  find  a  sen- 
tence musically  worded,  of  true  rhythm 
and  melody  in  the  words,  there  is  some- 
thing deep  and  good  in  the  meaning,  too. 
For  body  and  soul,  word  and  idea,  go 
strangely  together  here  as  everywhere." 
Not  to  look  beyond  the  material  is  to  miss 
the  meaning  of  the  work. 

In  an  art  such  as  music,  in  which  form 
and  content  are  one  and  inextricable,  it  is 
not  difficult  to  understand  that  the  medium 
of  expression  which  the  art  employs  is  ne- 
cessarily symbolic,  for  here  the  form  can- 
not exist  apart  from  the  meaning  to  be 
conveyed.  In  the  art  of  literature,  how- 
ever, the  case  is  not  so  clear,  for  the  mate- 
rial with  which  the  poet,  the  novelist,  the 
dramatist  works,  material  made  up  of  the 
facts  of  the  world  about  us,  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  regard  as  objective  realities.  An 
incident  is  an  incident,  the  inevitable  issue 
of  precedent  circumstances,  and  that 's  all 


[35] 
there  is  to  it.  Character  is  the  result  of  he- 
redity, environment,  training,  plus  the  in- 
explicable Ego.  To  regard  these  facts  of 
life  which  are  so  actual  and  immediate  as  a 
kind  of  animate  algebraic  formulae  seems 
absurd,  but  absurd  only  as  one  is  unable  to 
penetrate  to  the  inner  meaning  of  things. 
"Madame  Bovary,"  to  take  an  example 
quite  at  random,  is  called  a  triumph  of  real- 
ism. Now  realism,  of  all  literary  methods, 
should  register  the  fact  as  it  is,  and  least  of 
all  should  concern  itself  with  symbols.  But 
this  great  novel  is  more  than  the  record  of 
one  woman's  life.  Any  one  who  has  come 
to  understand  the  character  and  tempera- 
ment of  Flaubert  as  revealed  in  his  Letters 
must  feel  that "  Madame  Bovary  "  is  no  ar- 
bitrary recital  of  tragic  incident,  but  those 
people  who  move  through  his  pages,  what 
they  do  and  what  goes  on  about  them,  ex- 
pressed for  Flaubert  his  own  dreary,  baf- 
fled rebellion  against  life.     That  the  artist 


[36] 

may  consciously  employ  the  facts  of  life, 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  fact,  but  to  com- 
municate his  feeling  by  thus  bodying  it 
forth  in  concrete  symbols,  there  is  explicit 
testimony.  In  an  essay  dealing  with  his 
own  method  of  composition,  Poe  writes  : 
"  I  prefer  commencing  with  the  considera- 
tion of  an  effect.  Keeping  originality  al- 
ways in  view  ...  I  say  to  myself,  in  the 
first  place,  *  of  the  innumerable  effects  or 
impressions  of  which  the  heart,  the  intel- 
lect, or  (more  generally)  the  soul  is  sus- 
ceptible, what  one  shall  I,  on  the  present 
occasion,  select  ?  *  Having  chosen  a  novel 
first,  and  secondly,  a  vivid  effect,  I  consider 
whether  it  can  be  best  wrought  by  incident 
or  tone  .  .  .  afterwards  looking  about  me 
(or  rather  within)  for  such  combinations 
of  event  or  tone  as  shall  best  aid  me  in  the 
construction  of  the  effect."  Yes,  physical 
circumstances,  the  succession  of  incident, 
shifting  momentary  grouping  of  persons, 


[37] 
traits  of  character  in  varied  combination 
and  contrast,  —  all  these  are  significant  for 
the  literary  artist  of  spiritual  relations. 

As  the  symbol  of  what  the  artist  feels 
and  strives  to  express,  the  individual  work 
of  art  is  necessarily  more  than  any  mere 
transcript  of  fact.  It  is  the  meeting  and 
mingling  of  nature  and  the  spirit  of  man ; 
the  result  of  their  union  is  fraught  with 
the  inheritance  of  the  past  and  holds  within 
it  the  limitless  promise  of  the  future.  The 
work  of  art  is  a  focus,  gathering  into  itself 
all  the  stored  experience  of  the  artist,  and 
radiating  in  turn  so  much  to  the  beholder 
as  he  is  able  at  the  moment  to  receive.  A 
painter  is  starting  out  to  sketch.  Through 
underbrush  and  across  the  open  he  pushes 
his  way,  beset  by  beauty  on  every  side,  and 
storing  impressions,  sensations,  thoughts. 
At  last  his  eye  lights  upon  some  clump  of 
brush,  some  meadow  or  hill,  which  seems 
at  the  instant  to  sum  up  and  express  his 


[38] 

accumulated  experience.  In  rendering  this 
bit  of  nature,  he  pours  out  upon  his  canvas 
his  store  of  feeling.  It  is  the  single  case 
which  typifies  his  entire  course.  "The 
man's  whole  life  preludes  the  single  deed." 
His  way  through  the  world  has  been  just 
such  a  gathering  up  of  experience,  and  each 
new  work  which  he  produces  is  charged 
with  the  collected  wealth  of  years. 

The  special  work  is  the  momentary 
epitome  of  the  artist's  total  meaning.  He 
finds  this  brief  passage  in  nature  beautiful 
then  and  there  because  it  expresses  what 
he  feels  and  means.  He  does  not  try  to 
reproduce  the  thing,  but  uses  the  thing  for 
what  it  signifies.  The  thing  is  but  for  that 
moment :  it  signifies  all  that  has  gone  be- 
fore. As  he  watches,  a  cloud  passes  over 
the  sun  and  the  face  of  nature  is  darkened. 
Suddenly  the  scene  bursts  into  light  again. 
In  itself  the  landscape  is  no  brighter  than 
before  the  sun  was  darkened.    The  painter 


l39l 
feels  it  brighter  for  the  contrast,  and  inevi- 
tably his  rendering  of  its  aspect  is  height- 
ened and  intensified. 

Art  is  nature  heightened  and  intensified 
as  nature  is  interpreted  through  the  trans- 
figuring medium  of  the  human  spirit.  To 
the  object  is  added 

"  The  gleam, 
The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream." 

After  an  early  morning  in  the  fields,  Corot 
withdraws  to  his  house  to  rest.  «l  dream 
of  the  morning  landscape,"  he  writes  ;  « I 
dream  my  picture,  and  presently  I  will  paint 
my  dream."  But  not  only  does  the  artist 
render  the  beauty  which  this  landscape  hap- 
pens to  express  for  him :  he  charges  these 
colors  and  forms  with  the  beauty  of  all 
landscape.  Corot  painted  at  Ville  d'Avray; 
what  he  painted  was  God's  twilight  or  dawn 
enwrapping  tree  and  pool.  In  gratitude  and 
worship  he  revealed  to  men  the  tender,  in- 


[40] 

efFable  poetry  of  gray  dawns  in  all  places 
and  for  all  time.  Millet's  peasants  were 
called  John  and  Peter  and  Charles,  and 
they  tilled  the  soil  of  France;  but  on  their 
bowed  shoulders  rests  the  universal  burden; 
these  dumb  figures  are  eloquent  of  the  un- 
complaining, hopeless  "  peasanthood "  of 
the  world.  In  the  actual  to  discern  the  ideal, 
in  the  appearance  to  penetrate  to  the  real- 
ity, without  taking  leave  of  the  material  to 
reveal  the  spiritual, — this  is  the  mystery  and 
vocation  of  the  artist,  and  his  achievement 
is  art. 


Ill 

THE  WORK  OF  ART  AS  BEAUTIFUL 

Just  as  nature  and  life  are  significant  as 
the  material  manifestation  of  spiritual  forces 
and  relations,  so  a  work  of  art  is  in  its  turn 
the  symbol  by  which  the  artist  communi- 
cates himself;  it  is  his  revelation  to  men 
of  the  beauty  he  has  perceived  and  felt. 

Beauty  is  not  easy  to  define.  That  con- 
ception which  regards  beauty  as  the  power 
to  awaken  merely  agreeable  emotions  is 
limited  and  in  so  far  false.  Another  source 
of  misunderstanding  is  the  confusion  of 
beauty  with  moralistic  values.  It  is  said 
that  beauty  is  the  Ideal;  and  by  many  the 
"Ideal"  is  taken  to  mean  ideal  goodness. 
With  righteousness  and  sin  as  such  beauty 


[4*  ] 
has  no  concern.  Much  that  is  evil  in  life, 
much  that  offends  against  the  moral  law, 
must  be  regarded  as  beautiful  in  so  far  as 
it  plays  its  necessary  part  in  the  universal 
whole.  Clearing  away  these  misconcep- 
tions, then,  an  approximate  definition  would 
be  that  the  essence  of  beauty  is  harmony. 
So  soon  as  a  detail  is  shown  in  its  relation 
to  a  whole,  then  it  becomes  beautiful  be- 
cause it  is  expressive  of  the  supreme  unity. 
A  discord  in  music  is  felt  to  be  a  discord 
only  as  it  is  isolated ;  when  it  takes  its  fit- 
ting and  inevitable  place  in  the  large  unity 
of  the  symphony,  it  becomes  full  of  mean- 
ing. The  hippopotamus,  dozing  in  his  tank 
at  the  Zoo,  is  wildly  grotesque  and  ugly. 
But  who  shall  say  that,  seen  in  the  fast- 
nesses of  his  native  rivers,  he  is  not  the 
beautiful  perfect  fulfilling  of  nature's  har- 
mony ?  To  a  race  of  blacks,  the  fair-skinned 
Apollo  appearing  among  them  could  not 
but  be  monstrous.  The  smoking  factory, 


[43  ] 
sordid  and  hideous,  is  beautiful  to  him  who 
sees  that  it  accomplishes  a  necessary  func- 
tion in  the  great  scheme  of  life.  Beauty  is 
adaptation.  Whatever  is  truly  useful  is  in 
so  far  truly  beautiful.  The  steam  engine 
and  the  battleship  are  beautiful  just  as  truly 
as  Titian's  Madonna,  glorified  and  sweep- 
ing upward  into  the  presence  of  God  the 
Father.  Only  what  is  vital  and  serviceable, 
and  whatever  is  that,  is  beautiful. 

When  the  spirit  of  man  perceives  a  unity 
in  things,  a  working  together  of  parts,  there 
beauty  exists.  It  resides  in  the  synthesis 
of  details  to  the  end  of  shaping  a  complete 
whole.  This  perception,  this  synthesis,  is  a 
function  of  the  human  mind.  Beauty  is  not 
in  the  landscape,  but  in  the  intelligence 
which  apprehends  it.  Evidence  of  this  fun- 
damental truth  is  the  fact  that  the  same 
landscape  is  more  "beautiful"  to  one  man 
than  to  another,  or  to  a  third,  perhaps,  is  not 
beautiful  at  all.    It  is  only  as  the  individual 


[44] 
perceives  a  relation  among  the  parts  result- 
ing in  a  total  unity  that  the  object  becomes 
beautiful  for  him. 

This  abstract  exposition  may  be  made 
clearer  by  a  graphic  illustration.  Here  are 
four  figures  composed  of  the  same  ele- 


ments  : — 

w  ##*    ##      *  *## 

* 

*X"  WW  WW     W    w  w  w  w  w  w 

W         WW     w     w     W     W 

* 

wwwwwwwwwwwwww    * 
w       w       w       w 

WW 

Fig.  I. 

*  *  *  *  # 

www 

*  *  w  *  w 

w    w 

w 

*  *  *  *  * 

w                               * 

w 

*  *  *  *  * 

w    w 

w 

*  *  *  *  * 

www 

Fig.  II.  Fig.  III.  Fig.  IV. 

Figure  I.,  far  from  being  pleasing,  is  pos- 
itively disquieting.    With  the  other  three 


[45] 
figures,  the  perception  of  their  form  is  at- 
tended with  a  kind  of  pleasure.  Whereas 
the  first  figure  is  without  form  and  is  mean- 
ingless, each  of  the  second  group  exhibits 
harmony,  balance,  proportion,  interrelation 
of  parts :  each  is  perceived  to  be  a  whole. 
Although  experience  itself  comes  to  men  in 
fragments  and  seemingly  without  order,  yet 
the  human  mind  is  so  constituted  as  to  re- 
quire that  an  idea  or  a  truth  be  shown  to  be 
a  whole  before  the  mind  can  comprehend 
it.  In  considering  the  element  of  balance, 
it  should  be  noted,  as  illustrated  by  Figure 
IV.,  that  balance  is  not  necessarily  perfect 
symmetry.  A  Gothic  cathedral  is  beautiful 
no  less  than  a  Greek  temple.  In  a  painting 
of  a  landscape,  for  example,  it  is  necessary 
simply  that  the  masses  and  the  tones  stand 
in  balancing  relation ;  the  perfect  symme- 
try of  geometric  exactness,  characteristic 
of  Hellenic  and  Renaissance  art,  is  not  re- 
quired.   In  the  work  which  embodies  the 


[46] 

artist's  perception  of  the  universal  har- 
mony, there  must  be  rhythm,  order,  unity 
in  variety ;  so  framed  it  becomes  expres- 
sive and  significant. 

As  the  symbol  of  beauty,  the  work  of 
art  is  itself  beautiful  in  that  it  manifests  in 
itself  that  wholeness  and  integrity  which  is 
beauty.  Every  work  of  art  is  informed 
by  a  controlling  design;  it  subordinates 
manifold  details  to  a  definite  whole ;  it 
reduces  and  adjusts  its  parts  to  an  all- 
inclusive,  perceptible  unity.  The  Nurem- 
berg key  must  have  some  sort  of  rhythm ; 
the  rug  or  vestment  must  exhibit  a  pat- 
tern which  can  be  seen  to  be  a  whole ;  the 
canvas  must  show  balance  in  the  composi- 
tion, and  the  color  must  be  "in  tone."  In 
any  work  of  art  there  must  be  design  and 
purpose. 

In  nature  there  is  much  which  to  the 
limited  perception  of  men  does  not  ap- 
pear to  be  beautiful,  for  there  is  much 


[47] 
that  does  not  manifest  superficially  the 
necessary  harmony.  The  landscape  at 
noonday  under  the  blaze  of  the  relentless 
sun  discloses  many  things  which  are  seem- 
ingly incongruous  with  one  another.  The 
dull  vision  of  men  cannot  penetrate  to  the 
unity  underlying  it  all.  At  twilight,  as 
the  shadows  of  evening  wrap  it  round,  the 
same  landscape  is  invested  with  mysterious 
beauty.  Conflicting  details  are  lost,  harsh 
outlines  are  softened  and  merged,  discord- 
ant colors  are  mellowed  and  attuned.  Na- 
ture has  brought  her  field  and  hill  and 
clustered  dwellings  into  "tone."  So  the 
artist,  who  has  perceived  a  harmony  where 
the  common  eye  saw  it  not,  selects ;  he  sup- 
presses here,  strengthens  there,  fuses,  and 
brings  all  into  unity. 

Harmony  wherever  perceived  is  beauty. 
Beauty  made  manifest  by  the  agency  of 
the  human  spirit  is  art.  Art,  in  order  to 
reveal  this  harmony  to  men,  must  work 


[48] 

through  selection,  through  rejection  and 
emphasis,  through  interpretation.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  understand,  then,  that  the 
exact  reproduction  of  the  facts  of  the  ex- 
ternal world  is  not  in  a  true  sense  art. 

The  photograph,  which  is  the  most  ex- 
act method  of  reproducing  outward  aspect, 
is  denied  the  title  of  a  work  of  art ;  that 
is,  the  photograph  direct,  which  has  not 
been  retouched.  To  be  sure,  the  photo- 
graph is  the  product  of  a  mechanical  pro- 
cess, and  is  not,  except  incidentally,  the 
result  of  human  skill.  Another  kind  of 
reproduction  of  outward  aspect,  however, 
virtually  exact,  which  does  show  the  evi- 
dence of  human  skill,  is  yet  not  entitled  to 
rank  as  art,  —  the  imitative  or  deceptive 
picture.  Photograph  and  picture  are  ruled 
out  equally  on  the  one  count.  Neither 
selects. 

In  an  exhibition  of  paintings  were  once 
displayed  two  panels  precisely  similar  in 


[49] 
appearance,  presenting  an  army  coat  and 
cap,  a  sabre  and  a  canteen.  At  a  distance 
there  was  no  point  of  difference  in  the  two. 
A  nearer  view  disclosed  the  fact  that  on 
one  panel  the  objects  were  real  and  that 
the  other  panel  was  painted.  The  beholder 
was  pleased  by  the  exhibition  of  the  paint- 
er's skill ;  but  in  so  far  as  the  work  did  not 
reveal  a  significance  or  beauty  in  these  ob- 
jects which  the  artist  had  seen  and  the  be- 
holder had  not,  it  fell  short  of  being  a  work 
of  art.  Just  as  the  key  of  the  Nuremberg 
craftsman  was  a  work  of  art  in  that  it  was 
for  him  the  expression,  the  rendering  act- 
ual, of  a  new  beauty  it  was  given  him  to 
conceive,  so  only  that  is  art  which  makes 
manifest  a  beauty  that  is  new^  a  beauty 
that  is  truly  born  of  the  artist's  own  spirit. 
The  repetition  of  existing  forms  with  no 
modification  by  the  individual  workman  is 
not  creation,  but  imitation ;  and  imitation 
is  manufacture,  not  art.     Inasmuch  as  the 


[5o] 

two  panels  could  not  be  distinguished,  the 
presentment  signified  no  more  than  the 
reality.  Tried  as  a  work  of  art,  the  imi- 
tative picture,  in  common  with  the  photo- 
graph, lacks  the  necessary  element  of 
interpretation,  of  revelation.  That  the 
representation  may  become  art,  there  must 
be  added  to  it  some  new  attribute  or  qual- 
ity born  of  the  artist's  spirit.  The  work 
must  take  on  new  meaning. 

As  lending  his  work  significance  of  an 
obvious  sort,  a  significance  not  necessarily 
"  pictorial,"  the  painter  might  see  in  the 
objects  some  story  they  have  to  tell.  The 
plaster  of  the  garret  wall  where  they  are 
hanging  he  may  show  to  be  cracked ;  that 
tear  in  the  coat  speaks  of  faithful  service, 
but  the  coat  hangs  limp  and  dusty  now; 
the  inscription  on  the  canteen  is  almost  ob- 
literated, and  the  strap  is  broken ;  the  sabre, 
which  shows  the  marks  of  stern  usage  along 
its  blade,  is  spotted  with  rust:   the  whole 


composition  means  Trusty  Servants  in  Neg- 
lect. By  the  emphasis  of  certain  aspects 
the  picture  is  made  to  signify  more  than 
the  mere  objects  themselves,  wherein  there 
was  nothing  salient.  The  meaning  is  im- 
posed upon  them  or  drawn  out  of  them  by 
the  artist.  Or  again,  the  painter  may  see 
in  these  things  the  expression  for  him  of 
a  harmony  which  he  can  manifest  by  the 
arrangement  of  line  and  color,  and  he  so 
disposes  his  material  as  to  make  that  har- 
mony visible.  It  is,  then,  not  the  crude 
fact  which  the  artist  transcribes,  but  rather 
some  feeling  he  has  toward  the  fact.  By 
selection,  by  adjustment,  he  gives  this  spe- 
cial aspect  of  the  fact  emphasis  and  relief. 
In  virtue  of  his  interpretation  the  picture 
acquires  a  significance  that  is  new;  it  gives 
the  beholder  a  pleasure  which  the  fact 
itself  did  not  give,  and  thus  it  passes  over 
into  the  domain  of  art. 

The  purpose  of  art  is  not  the  reproduc- 


[52] 
tion  of  a  beautiful  object,  but  the  expres- 
sion in  objective  form  of  a  beautiful  idea. 
A  plaster  cast  of  a  hand,  however  comely 
the  hand  may  be,  is  not  a  work  of  art.  As 
with  the  photograph,  the  work  involves 
only  incidentally  the  exercise  of  human 
skill.  But  that  is  not  all.  In  order  to 
render  the  work  in  the  spirit  of  art,  the 
sculptor  must  model,  not  the  hand,  but  his 
sense  of  the  hand ;  he  must  draw  out  and 
express  its  character,  its  significance.  To 
him  it  is  not  a  certain  form  in  bone  and 
flesh ;  to  him  it  means  grace,  delicacy,  sen- 
sitiveness, or  perhaps  resolution,  strength, 
force.  As  the  material  symbol  of  his  idea 
of  the  hand,  he  will  select  and  make  salient 
such  lines  and  contours  as  are  expressive 
to  him  of  that  character. 

Indeed,  so  little  depends  upon  the  exact 
subject  represented  and  so  much  upon  the 
artist's  feeling  toward  it,  so  much  depends 
upon  the  spirit  of  the  rendering,  that  the 


[53] 
representation  of  a  subject  uninteresting  or 
even  "ugly"  in  itself  may  be  beautiful.  In 
the  art  of  literature,  the  subject  is  drawn 
from  the  life  of  man.  The  material  of  the 
poem,  the  novel,  the  drama,  is  furnished 
by  man's  total  experience,  the  sum  of  his 
sensations,  impressions,  emotions,  and  the 
events  in  which  he  is  concerned.  But  expe- 
rience crowds  in  upon  him  at  every  point, 
without  order  and  without  relation;  the 
daily  round  of  living  is  for  most  men  a 
humdrum  thing.  Yet  it  is  just  this  rudi- 
mentary and  undistinguished  mass  of  expe- 
rience which  is  transmuted  into  literature; 
by  the  alchemy  of  art  the  representation  of 
that  which  is  without  interest  becomes  in- 
teresting. And  it  happens  on  this  wise. 
Life  is  humdrum  only  in  so  far  as  it  is 
meaningless;  men  can  endure  any  amount 
of  drudgery  and  monotony  provided  that 
it  lead  somewhere,  that  they  perceive  its 
relation  to  a  larger  unity  which  is  the  total 


[54] 
of  life.  As  part  of  a  whole  which  can  be 
apprehended,  immediately  it  acquires  pur- 
pose and  becomes  significant.  It  is  the  sense 
of  meaning  in  life  which  gives  color  and 
warmth  to  the  march  of  uniform  days.  So 
the  literary  artist  shapes  his  inchoate  mate- 
rial to  a  definite  end;  out  of  the  limitless 
complex  details  at  his  command,  he  selects 
such  passages  of  background,  such  inci- 
dents, and  such  traits  of  character  as  make 
for  the  setting  forth  of  the  idea  he  has  con- 
ceived. Clearly  the  artist  cannot  use  every- 
thing, clearly  he  does  not  aim  to  reproduce 
the  fact :  there  are  abridgments  and  sup- 
pressions, as  there  are  accent  and  emphasis. 
The  finished  work  is  a  composite,  embody- 
ing what  is  essential  of  many,  many  pre- 
liminary studies  and  sketches,  wrought  and 
compiled  with  generous  industry.  The  mas- 
ter is  recognized  in  what  he  omits ;  what  is 
suppressed  is  felt  but  not  perceived:  the 
great  artist,  in  the  result,  steps  from  peak 
to  peak. 


[55] 

" The  Sun's  rim  dips;  the  stars  rush  out: 
At  one  stride  comes  the  Dark." 

Thus  with  three  strokes  the  master  Cole- 
ridge depicts  the  onrush  of  the  night  over 
boundless  spaces  of  sky  and  sea.  Within 
the  compass  of  a  few  lines,  Tennyson  re- 
gisters the  interminable,  empty  monotony 
of  weary  years : 

"  No  sail  from  day  to  day,  but  every  day 
The  sunrise  broken  into  scarlet  shafts 
Among  the  palms  and  ferns  and  precipices ; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  east ; 
The  blaze  upon  his  island  overhead ; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  west; 
Then  the  great  stars  that  globed  themselves  in 

Heaven, 
The  hollower-bellowing  ocean,  and  again 
The  scarlet  shafts  of  sunrise  —  but  no  sail." 

Thus  through  selection  does  the  artist  work 
to  interpretation.  By  detaching  the  eternal 
meaning  from  the  momentary  fact,  by  em- 
bodying his  sense  of  its  significance  in  such 


[56] 
concrete  forms  as  symbolize  his  idea,  by- 
investing  the  single  instance  with  univer- 
sally typical  import,  then  in  very  truth  he 
represents.  Nature  is  not  the  subject  of 
art;  she  is  the  universal  treasury  from 
whose  infinitely  various  store  the  artist  se- 
lects his  symbols. 

A  special  method  in  art  may  here  sug- 
gest itself  as  having  for  its  purpose  to  re- 
produce the  fact  in  perfect  fidelity;  the 
method  is  called  realism.  But  a  moment's 
considerate  analysis  shows  that  realism  is 
only  a  label  for  one  manner  of  handling, 
and  in  the  end  comes  no  nearer  the  object 
as  it  "  really  "  is.  In  its  essence  realism  is 
the  artist's  personal  vision  of  the  fact,  ex- 
actly as  idealism  or  romanticism  or  impres- 
sionism is  personal.  For  after  all,  what  is 
the  reality  ?  A  chance  newsboy  is  offering 
his  papers  on  a  crowded  street  corner.  The 
fine  lady  recoils  from  his  filth  and  from  all 
contact  with  him ;  the  philanthropist  sees  in 


[57] 
him  a  human  being  to  help  and  to  redeem; 
the  philosopher  regards  him  dispassionately 
as  a  "social  factor,"  the  result  of  heredity 
and  environment;  the  artist  cries  out  in  joy 
as  his  eye  lights  upon  good  stuff  to  paint. 
But  all  the  while,  which  of  these  concep- 
tions figures  the  "real"  newsboy?  Not 
one.  For  he  is  all  these  together;  and  the 
single  observer,  whatever  his  bias,  cannot 
apprehend  him  at  every  point.  Any  at- 
tempt to  represent  him  involves  selection 
and  interpretation,  the  suppression  of  some 
traits  in  order  to  emphasize  others,  which 
are  the  special  aspects  that  have  impressed 
the  given  observer.  So  there  is  no  essential 
realism.  The  term  applies  to  the  method 
of  those  who  choose  to  render  what  is  less 
comforting  in  life,  who  insist  on  those  char- 
acteristics of  things  which  men  call  ugly. 
In  realism,  just  as  truly  as  in  any  other  kind 
of  treatment,  is  expressed  the  personality 
of  the  artist,  his  own  peculiar  way  of  envis- 
aging the  world. 


[58] 
A  work  of  art  is  born  of  the  artist's  de- 
sire to  express  his  joy  in  some  new  aspect 
of  the  universal  harmony  which  has  been 
disclosed  to  him.  The  mission  of  art  is 
through  interpretation  to  reveal.  It  hap- 
pens sometimes  that  a  visitor  at  an  exhibi- 
tion of  paintings  is  shocked  by  a  picture 
which  seems  to  him  for  the  moment  impos- 
sible, because  so  far  beyond  the  range  of 
his  experience;  yet  withal  he  finds  himself 
attracted  by  it  and  he  returns  to  study  it. 
It  is  not  many  days  before  his  glance  is  ar- 
rested by  that  very  effect  in  nature,  and  he 
says,  "Why,  that  is  like  that  picture!"  It 
was  the  artist  who  first  saw  it  and  who 
taught  him  to  see  it  for  himself.  When  one 
observes  an  effect  in  nature  or  in  life  that 
one  calls  "aCorot"  or  "a  Whistler,"  one 
means  that  to  Corot  or  to  Whistler  is  due 
the  glory  of  discovering  that  fuller  beauty 
and  revealing  it.  Browning  makes  Fra 
Lippo  Lippi  say : 


[59] 

"  We  're  made  so  that  we  love 
First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have 

passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see ; 
And  so  they  are  better,  painted — better  to  us, 
Which  is  the  same  thing.     Art  was  given  for 

that." 

This  revealing  power  of  art  is  not  restricted 
to  the  individual  appreciator.  It  is  said  that 
the  French  are  an  artistic  people  and  that 
Americans  are  not.  The  explanation  is  that 
for  generations  the  artists  of  France  have 
been  discovering  to  their  countrymen  the 
beauty  that  is  around  them  at  their  very 
door,  and  have  taught  them  to  appreciate 
it.  The  Americans  will  be  an  artistic  people 
when  our  artists  shall  have  done  the  like 
for  us.  When  there  shall  have  been  for 
generations  a  truly  native  American  art, 
there  will  be  a  public  to  understand  and 
to  appreciate.  So  it  is  that  everywhere 
the  high  function  of  art  is  to  reveal.    As 


[6o] 

a  friend,  more  sensitive  and  more  enthusi- 
astic, with  whom  we  are  strolling,  points 
out  to  us  many  beauties  by  the  wayside  or 
in  trees  and  sky,  so  the  artist  takes  us  by 
the  hand  and  leads  us  out  into  life,  indicat- 
ing for  us  a  harmony  to  which  we  were 
blind  before.  Burdened  with  affairs  and 
the  daily  round,  we  had  not  thought  to 
look  off  and  out  to  the  spreading  meadows 
tossing  into  hills  which  roll  upward  into  the 
blue  heaven  beyond. 

The  beauty  thus  revealed  is  a  beauty 
which  the  artist  has  apprehended  in  spirit 
and  which  he  would  make  actual.  A  work 
of  art  is  the  expression  of  an  aspiration. 
The  crude  and  tawdry  images  of  the  Ma- 
donna set  in  the  roadside  cross  are  just  as 
truly  a  work  of  art  as  the  rapt  saints  of 
Giotto  or  the  perfect  Madonnas  of  Raphael 
in  so  far  as  they  are  expressive  of  what 
those  poor,  devout  souls  who  fashioned 
them  felt  of  worship  and  of  love.     After 


[6i  ] 

all,  the  difference  is  that  Giotto  felt  more 
than  they,  Raphael  was  endowed  with  more 
accomplished  powers  of  expression.  The 
work  receives  its  import  as  it  is  the  faith- 
ful utterance  of  him  who  shaped  it,  as  it 
is  genuinely  the  realization  of  his  ideal. 
"The  gift  without  the  giver  is  bare." 
But  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  gift  with- 
out the  receiver  is  sterile  and  void,  for  art 
involves  not  only  its  creator's  intention  but 
also  its  message  to  him  whom  the  work 
reaches.  In  a  book,  it  is  not  only  what  the 
writer  says  that  makes  its  significance  but 
also  what  the  reader  thinks  as  he  reads. 
In  so  far  as  any  man  finds  in  picture  or 
poem  or  song  a  new  beauty,  a  fuller  sense 
of  harmony  than  was  his  before,  for  him 
that  is  a  work  of  art. 

Thus  the  standard  by  which  art  is  to  be 
tried  is  relative.  For  its  creator,  the  work 
is  art  in  that  it  embodies  a  perception  of 
new  harmony  that  is  peculiarly  his.    In  the 


[62] 

material  result,  this  special  character  is  im- 
parted to  the  work  by  the  artist's  instinc- 
tive selection.  No  two  painters,  though 
equipped  with  equal  technical  skill  and  per- 
haps of  like  tastes  and  preferences,  would 
or  indeed  could  render  the  same  sweep  of 
landscape  in  precisely  similar  fashion.  Ob- 
viously, to  set  down  everything  were  at 
once  an  impossibility  and  an  untruth,  for 
the  detail  of  nature  is  infinite  and  the  be- 
holder does  not  see  everything.  Each  is 
bound  to  select  such  details  as  impress  him, 
and  his  selection  will  be  determined  by  the 
way  in  which  he  as  a  unique  personality, 
an  individual  different  from  every  other 
man  in  the  whole  wide  universe,  feels  about 
the  bit  of  nature  before  him.  In  express- 
ing by  his  special  medium  what  he  feels 
about  the  landscape,  he  aims,  in  the  selec- 
tion of  material  form  and  color,  to  detach 
and  render  visible  what  of  essential  truth 
the  landscape  means  to  him,  to  purge  it  of 


[63] 
accidents,  and  register  its  eternal  beauty. 
The  painter  will  not  attempt,  then,  to  re- 
produce the  physical  facts  of  nature,  —  the 
topography,  geology,  botany,  of  the  land- 
scape, —  but  rather  through  those  facts  in 
terms  of  color  and  form  he  tries  to  render 
its  expression :  its  quality,  as  brilliance,  ten- 
derness ;  its  mood,  as  joy,  mystery,  setting 
down  those  salient  aspects  of  it  which  com- 
bine to  give  it  character  and  meaning.  For 
landscape  —  to  recall  the  exposition  of  a 
preceding  page  —  has  its  expression  as 
truly  as  the  human  face.  A  man  knows 
his  friends  not  by  the  shape  of  the  nose  or 
the  color  of  the  eyes,  but  by  the  character 
which  these  features  express,  the  personal- 
ity which  shines  in  the  face  and  radiates 
from  it.  This  effluence  of  the  soul  within 
is  the  essential  man;  people  call  it  the 
"expression."  As  with  human  life,  so  with 
the  many  aspects  of  nature.  External 
traits  are  merged  in  the  spiritual  meaning. 


[64] 
The  material  forms  have  the  power  of  af- 
fecting the  spirit  thus  or  so;  and  in  man's 
reaction  on  his  universe  they  come  to  take 
on  a  symbolic  emotional  significance.  Each 
manifestation  of  nature  arouses  in  the  artist, 
more  or  less  consciously  on  his  part,  some 
feeling  toward  it :  he  cares,  then,  to  repre- 
sent these  external  material  forms,  whether 
a  flower,  a  landscape,  a  human  face,  only 
because  there  is  in  them  something  in 
which  he  delights ;  he  fashions  the  work  of 
art  in  praise  of  the  thing  he  loves.  To  the 
clever  technician  who  imitatively  paints  the 
flower  as  he  knows  it  to  be, 

"  A  primrose  on  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  is  to  him 
And  it  is  nothing  more." 

But  to  the  artist 

"  The  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

And  it  is  these  thoughts  that  he  cares  to 


[6j] 

express  and  not  the  visible  truth  about  the 
flower.  A  writer  was  walking  along  the 
streets  of  Paris  on  a  day  in  early  March. 

"  It  was  dark  and  rather  cold.  I  was  gloomy, 
and  walked  because  I  had  nothing  to  do.  I 
passed  by  some  flowers  placed  breast-high  upon 
a  wall.  A  jonquil  in  bloom  was  there.  It  is 
the  strongest  expression  of  desire :  it  was  the 
first  perfume  of  the  year.  I  felt  all  the  hap- 
piness destined  for  man.  This  unutterable  har- 
mony of  souls,  the  phantom  of  the  ideal  world, 
arose  in  me  complete.  I  never  felt  anything  so 
great  or  so  instantaneous.  I  know  not  what 
shape,  what  analogy,  what  secret  of  relation  it 
was  that  made  me  see  in  this  flower  a  limitless 
beauty.  ...  I  shall  never  enclose  in  a  concep- 
tion this  power,  this  immensity  that  nothing 
will  express ;  this  form  that  nothing  will  con- 
tain; this  ideal  of  a  better  world  which  one 
feels,  but  which  it  would  seem  that  nature  has 
not  made." 

And  if  Senancour  had  set  himself  to  paint 
his  jonquil  as  he  has  written  about  it,  how 


[66] 

that  tender  flower  would  have  been  trans- 
figured and  glorified ! 

What  the  artist  aims  to  render  is  not 
the  rose  but  the  beauty  of  the  rose,  his 
sense  of  one  chord  in  the  universal  har- 
mony which  the  rose  sounds  for  him,  not 
that  only,  but  the  beauty  of  all  roses  that 
ever  were  or  ever  shall  be ;  and  inevitably 
he  will  select  such  colors  and  such  lines  as 
bring  that  special  and  interpreted  beauty 
into  relief,  and  so  make  manifest  to  the 
beholder  what  was  revealed  to  his  own 
higher  vision,  by  virtue  of  which,  and  not 
because  of  any  exceptional  technical  skill, 
he  is  an  artist. 


IV 

ART  AND  APPRECIATION 

It  may  be  that  some  reader  of  the  fore- 
going pages  will  attempt  to  apply  the  prin- 
ciples therein  set  forth  to  the  pictures  shown 
in  the  next  exhibition  he  happens  to  attend. 
It  is  more  than  probable  that  in  his  first 
efforts  he  will  be  disappointed.  For  the 
principles  discussed  have  dealt  with  art  in 
its  authentic  manifestations;  and  not  every 
painter  is  an  artist,  not  every  picture  is  a 
work  of  art. 

At  the  very  outset  it  should  be  said  that 
an  exhibition  of  paintings  as  ordinarily 
made  up  is  confusing  and  wholly  illogical. 
We  may  suppose  that  a  volume  to  be  read 
through  in  one  sitting  of  two  hours  is  placed 


[68] 

in  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  reader.  The 
book  consists  of  essays,  poems,  short  sto- 
ries, and  dramatic  dialogue,  each  within  the 
compass  of  a  few  pages,  each  contributed 
by  a  different  writer  as  an  example  of  his 
work  for  the  year.  We  may  suppose  now 
that  the  reader  is  asked  to  gather  from  this 
volume,  read  hastily  and  either  superficially 
or  in  random  bits,  some  idea  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  each  author  and  of  the  import  and 
scope  of  contemporary  American  literature. 
Is  it  a  fair  test?  This  volume,  we  may  fur- 
ther suppose,  is  practically  the  only  means 
by  which  the  writer  can  get  his  work  be- 
fore the  public.  A  public  means  a  pur- 
chaser, and  of  course  the  writer  must  live. 
Is  it  reasonable  to  think  that  every  number 
contributed  to  such  a  volume  will  be  a  work 
of  art,  wrought  with  singleness  of  heart  and 
in  loving  devotion  to  an  ideal?  There  are 
still  with  us  those  who  "work  for  money" 
and  those  who  "work  for  fame."   There 


[69] 
are  those  who  believe  in  "giving  the  pub- 
lic what  it  wants/'  and  the  numbers  they 
contribute  to  the  yearly  volumes  are  sam- 
ples of  the  sort  of  thing  they  do,  from  which 
the  public  may  order.  In  the  table  of  con- 
tents stand  celebrated  names;  and  to  the 
work  of  such  men,  perhaps,  will  turn  the 
seeker  after  what  he  thinks  ought  to  be  the 
best,  not  realizing  that  these  are  the  men 
who  have  known  how  to  "  give  the  people 
what  they  want,"  that  the  people  do  not 
always  want  the  good  and  right  thing,  and 
that  it  is  somewhat  the  habit  of  genius  to 
dispense  with  contemporary  recognition. 
If  there  is  here  or  there  in  the  book  an  essay 
or  a  poem  the  product  of  thought  and  effort 
and  offered  in  all  seriousness,  how  little 
chance  it  has  of  being  appreciated,  except 
by  a  few,  even  if  it  is  remarked  at  all  in  the 
jumble  of  miscellaneous  contributions. 

This  hypothetical  volume  is  a  fair  paral- 
lel of  an  annual  exhibition  of  paintings.  In 


C?o] 

such  an  exhibition  the  number  of  works  of 
art,  the  true,  inevitable  expression  of  a  new 
message,  is  relatively  small.  The  most 
celebrated  and  most  popular  painters  are 
not  necessarily  by  that  fact  great  artists,  or 
indeed  artists  at  all.  Contemporary  judg- 
ment is  notoriously  liable  to  go  astray. 
The  gods  of  one  generation  are  often  the 
laughing  stock  of  the  next ;  the  idols  of  the 
fathers  are  torn  down  and  trampled  under 
foot  by  the  children.  Some  spirits  there 
have  been  of  liberal  promise  who  have  not 
been  able  to  withstand  the  demands  made 
upon  them  by  early  popular  approval. 
Such  is  the  struggle  and  soul's  tragedy 
which  is  studied  convincingly  in  Mr.  Zang- 
wilPs  novel,  "The  Master."  No  assault  on 
the  artist's  integrity  is  so  insidious  as  im- 
mediate favor,  which  in  its  turn  begets  the 
fatal  desire  to  please. 

To  the  "successful"  painters,  however, 
are  for  the  most  part  accorded  the  places 


[7i  3 

of  honor  on  academy  walls.  The  canvases 
of  these  men  are  seen  first  by  the  visitor; 
but  they  are  not  all.  There  are  other  pic- 
tures which  promise  neither  better  nor 
worse.  Here  are  paintings  of  merit,  good 
in  color  and  good  in  drawing,  but  empty 
of  any  meaning.  Scattered  through  the 
exhibition  are  the  works  of  a  group  of  able 
men,  imitating  themselves,  each  trying  to 
outdo  the  others  by  a  display  of  cleverness 
in  solving  some  "painter's  problem  "  or  by 
some  startling  effect  of  subject  or  handling. 
But  it  is  a  sad  day  for  any  artist  when  he 
ceases  to  find  his  impulse  and  inspiration 
either  in  his  own  spirit  or  in  nature,  and 
when  he  looks  to  his  fellow  craftsmen  for 
the  motive  of  his  work.  Again,  there  are 
pictures  by  men  who,  equipped  with  ade- 
quate technical  skill,  have  caught  the  man- 
ner of  a  master,  and  mistaking  the  manner 
for  the  message  it  was  simply  intended  to 
express,  they  degrade  it  into  a  mannerism 


and  turn  out  a  product  which  people  do  not 
distinguish  from  the  authentic  utterances 
of  the  master.  The  artist  is  a  seer  and 
prophet,  the  channel  of  divine  influences : 
the  individual  painter,  sculptor,  writer,  is  a 
very  human  being. 

As  he  looks  over  these  walls,  clamorous 
of  the  commonplace  and  the  commercial, 
the  seeker  after  what  is  good  and  true  in 
art  realizes  how  very  few  of  these  pictures 
have  been  rendered  in  the  spirit  of  love  and 
joy.  The  painter  has  one  eye  on  his  ob- 
ject and  one  eye  on  the  public;  and  too 
often,  as  a  distinguished  actor  once  said  of 
the  stage  manager  whose  vision  is  divided 
between  art  and  the  box  office,  the  painter 
is  a  one-eyed  man. 

A  painter  once  refused  to  find  anything 
to  interest  him,  still  less  to  move  him,  in 
a  silent  street  with  a  noble  spire  detach- 
ing itself  vaguely  from  the  luminous  blue 
depths   of  a  midnight   sky,   because,  he 


i    [73] 

said,  "People  won't  buy  dark  things,  so 
what 's  the  use  ?  You  might  as  well  do 
bright,  pretty  things  that  they  will  buy, 
and  that  are  just  as  easy  to  make."  A 
portrait-painter  gives  up  landscape  sub- 
jects because,  as  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
declare,  it  hurts  his  business.  And  the 
painters  themselves  are  not  altogether  to 
blame  for  this  attitude  towards  their  work. 
The  fault  lies  half  with  the  people  who  buy 
pictures,  having  the  money,  and  who  have 
not  a  gleam  of  understanding  of  the  mean- 
ing of  art.  A  woman  who  had  ordered 
her  house  to  be  furnished  and  decorated 
expensively,  remarked  to  a  caller  who 
commented  on  a  water-color  hanging  in 
the  drawing-room :  "Yes,  I  think  it  matches 
the  wall-paper  very  nicely."  When  such 
is  the  purpose  of  those  who  paint  pictures 
and  such  is  the  understanding  of  those  who 
buy  them,  it  is  not  surprising  that  not  every 
picture  is  inevitably  a  work  of  art. 


[74] 
But  what  is  the  poor  seeker  after  art  to 
do  ?  The  case  is  by  no  means  hopeless. 
In  current  exhibitions  a  few  canvases  strike 
a  new  note ;  and  by  senses  delicately  at- 
tuned this  note  can  be  distinguished  within 
the  jangle  of  far  louder  and  popular  tunes 
ground  out,  as  it  were,  by  the  street-piano. 
Seriously  to  study  contemporary  painting, 
however,  the  logical  opportunity  is  fur- 
nished by  the  exhibitions  of  the  works  of 
single  men  or  of  small  groups.  As  the 
reader  who  wishes  to  understand  an  author 
or  perhaps  a  school  does  not  content  him- 
self with  random  extracts,  but  instead  iso- 
lates the  man  for  the  moment  and  reads 
his  work  consecutively  and  one  book  in  its 
relation  to  his  others ;  so  the  student  of 
pictures  can  appreciate  the  work  and  un- 
derstand the  significance  of  a  given  painter 
only  as  he  sees  a  number  of  his  canvases 
together  and  in  relation.  So,  he  is  able  to 
gather  something  of  the  man's  total  mean- 
ing. 


[75] 

Widely  different  from  annual  exhibi- 
tions, too,  are  galleries  and  museums  ;  for 
here  the  proportion  of  really  good  things 
is  immeasurably  larger.  In  the  study  of 
masterpieces,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  the 
amateur  may  exercise  judgment  and  mod- 
eration. He  should  not  try  to  do  too  much 
at  one  time,  for  he  can  truly  appreciate 
only  as  he  enters  fully  into  the  spirit  of 
the  work  and  allows  it  to  possess  him.  To 
achieve  this  sympathy  and  understanding 
within  the  same  hour  for  more  than  a  very 
few  great  works  is  manifestly  impossible. 
Such  appreciation  involves  fundamentally  a 
quick  sensitiveness  to  the  appeal  and  the  vari- 
ously expressive  power  of  color  and  line  and 
form.  To  win  from  the  picture  its  fullest 
meaning,  the  observer  may  bring  to  bear 
some  knowledge  of  the  artist  who  pro- 
duced it  and  of  the  age  and  conditions  in 
which  he  lived.  But  in  the  end  he  must 
surrender  himself  to  the  work  of  art,  bring- 


[76] 

ing  to  it  his  intellectual  equipment,  his 
store  of  sensuous  and  emotional  experi- 
ence, his  entire  power  of  being  moved. 

For  when  all  is  said,  there  is  no  single 
invariable  standard  by  which  to  try  a  work 
of  art:  its  significance  to  the  appreciator 
rests  upon  his  capacity  at  the  moment  to 
receive  it.  "  A  jest's  prosperity  lies  in  the 
ear  of  him  that  hears  it."  The  appreciator 
need  simply  ask  himself,  "What  has  this 
work  to  reveal  to  me  of  beauty  that  I  have 
not  perceived  for  myself?  I  shall  not  look 
for  the  pretty  and  the  agreeable.  But  what 
of  new  significance,  energy,  life,  has  this 
work  to  express  to  me  ?  I  will  accept  no 
man  entirely  and  unquestioningly,  I  will 
condemn  no  one  unheard.  No  man  has 
the  whole  truth ;  every  man  has  some  mea- 
sure of  the  truth,  however  small.  Let  it 
be  my  task  to  find  it  and  to  separate  it 
from  what  is  unessential  and  false.  In  my 
search  for  what  is  true,  I  will  conserve  my 


[77] 
integrity  and  maintain  my  independence. 
And  I  shall  recognize  my  own  wherever  I 
may  find  it." 

"  Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things,"  de- 
clared an  ancient  philosopher.  And  his 
teaching  has  not  been  superseded  to-day. 
The  individual  is  the  creator  of  his  own 
universe ;  he  is  the  focus  of  the  currents 
and  forces  of  his  world.  The  meaning  of 
all  things  is  subjective.  So  the  measure 
of  beauty  in  life  for  a  man  is  determined 
by  his  capacity  to  receive  and  understand. 
Thus  it  is  that  a  man's  joy  in  experience 
and  his  appreciation  of  art  in  any  of  its 
manifestations  are  conditioned  by  the  op- 
portunity that  nature  or  art  furnishes  for 
his  spirit  to  exercise  itself.  In  the  reading 
of  poetry,  for  example,  we  seek  the  ex- 
pression of  ourselves.  Our  first  emotion 
is,  perhaps,  a  simple,  unreflecting  delight, 
the  delight  which  a  butterfly  must  feel 
among  the  flowers  or  that  of  a  child  play- 


[78] 

ing  in  the  fields  under  the  warm  sun;  it 
is  a  delight  wholly  physical,  —  pure  sen- 
sation. A  quick  taking  of  the  breath,  the 
escape  of  a  sigh,  inarticulate  and  uncriti- 
cal, are  the  only  expression  we  can  find 
at  that  instant  for  what  we  feel:  as  when 
an  abrupt  turn  of  the  road  spreads  out 
before  us  a  landscape  of  which  we  had 
not  dreamed,  or  we  enter  for  the  first  time 
the  presence  of  the  Apollo  Belvedere. 
We  know  simply  that  we  are  pleased. 
But  after  nerves  have  ceased  to  tingle  so 
acutely,  we  begin  to  think;  and  we  seek 
to  give  account  to  ourselves  of  the  beauty 
which  for  the  moment  we  could  but  feel. 
Once  arrived  at  the  attitude  of  reflection, 
we  find  that  the  poetry  which  affects  us 
most  and  to  which  we  oftenest  return  is 
the  poetry  that  contains  the  record  of  our 
own  experience,  but  heightened,  the  poetry 
which  expresses  our  desires  and  aspira- 
tions, that  in  which  we  recognize  ourselves 


[79] 
elevated  and  idealized.    In  so  far  as  we  see 
in  it  the  ennobled  image  of  our  own  nature, 
so  far  it  has  power  to  hold  us  and  to  stir 
us. 

An  elementary  manifestation  of  the  ten- 
dency to  seek  in  art  the  record  of  our  own 
experience  is  seen  in  the  popularity  of 
those  pictures  whose  subjects  are  familiar 
and  can  be  immediately  recognized.  On 
a  studio  wall  was  once  hanging  a  "  Study 
of  Brush,"  showing  the  play  of  sunlight 
through  quivering  leaves.  A  visitor  asked 
the  painter  why  he  did  not  put  some  chick- 
ens in  the  foreground.  To  her  the  canvas 
was  meaningless,  for  she  had  never  seen, 
had  never  really  seen,  the  sunlight  dancing 
on  burnished  leaves.  The  chickens,  which 
she  had  seen  and  could  recognize,  were  the 
element  of  the  familiar  she  required  in 
order  to  find  any  significance  in  the  pic- 
ture. 

This  tendency,  of  which  the  demand 


[8o] 

for  chickens  is  a  rudimentary  manifesta- 
tion, is  the  basis  of  all  appreciation.  The 
artist's  revelation  of  the  import  of  life  we 
can  receive  and  understand  only  as  we 
have  felt  a  little  of  that  import  for  our- 
selves. Color  is  meaningless  to  a  blind 
man,  music  does  not  exist  for  the  deaf. 
To  him  who  has  never  opened  his  eyes  to 
behold  the  beauty  of  field  and  hill  and  trees 
and  sky,  to  him  whose  spirit  has  not  dimly 
apprehended  something  of  that  eternal  sig- 
nificance of  which  these  things  are  the  ma- 
terial visible  bodying  forth,  to  such  a  one 
the  work  of  the  master  is  only  so  much 
paint  and  canvas.  The  task  of  the  appre- 
ciator,  then,  is  to  develop  his  capacity  to 
receive  and  enjoy. 

That  capacity  is  to  be  trained  by  the  ex- 
ercise of  itself.  Each  new  harmony  which 
he  is  enabled  to  perceive  intensifies  his 
power  to  feel  and  widens  the  range  of  his 
vision.     The  more  beauty  he  apprehends 


[8i  ] 
in  the  world,  so  much  the  more  of  univer- 
sal forces  he  brings  into  unity  with  his  own 
personality.  By  this  extension  of  his  spirit 
he  reaches  out  and  becomes  merged  in  the 
all-embracing  life. 

If  the  conception  be  true  that  a  supreme 
unity,  linking  all  seemingly  chaotic  details, 
ultimately  brings  them  into  order,  and  that 
this  unity,  which  is  spiritual,  penetrates 
every  atom  of  matter,  fusing  everything 
and  making  all  things  one;  then  the  ap- 
preciator  will  realize  that  the  significance 
of  art  is  for  the  spirit.  The  beauty  which 
the  artist  reveals  is  but  the  harmony  which 
underlies  the  universal  order;  and  he  in 
his  turn  must  apprehend  that  beauty  spir- 
itually. 

From  this  truth  it  follows  that  the  con- 
dition of  aesthetic  enjoyment,  or  in  other 
words  the  appreciation  of  beauty,  is  detach- 
ment of  spirit  and  remoteness  from  practi- 
cal consequences.     The  classic  illustration 


[8a] 

of  the  truth  is  the  saying  of  Lucretius,  that 
it  is  sublime  to  stand  on  the  shore  and  be- 
hold a  shipwreck.  It  is  sublime  only  as 
one's  personal  interests  and  feelings  are 
not  engaged.  It  would  not  be  sublime  if 
it  were  possible  for  the  spectator  to  aid  in 
averting  the  catastrophe;  it  would  not  be 
sublime  if  one's  friends  were  aboard  the 
ship.  One  is  able  to  appreciate  beauty 
only  as  one  is  able  to  detach  one's  self  from 
what  is  immediate  and  practical,  and  by  vir- 
tue of  this  detachment,  to  apprehend  the 
spiritual  significance.  The  sublimity  of  the 
shipwreck  lies  in  what  it  expresses  of  the 
impersonal  might  of  elemental  forces  and 
man's  impotence  in  the  struggle  against 
nature.  That  sublimity,  which  is  one  mani- 
festation of  beauty,  is  of  the  spirit,  and  by 
the  spirit  it  must  be  apprehended. 

To  illustrate  this  truth  by  a  few  homely 
examples.  A  farmer  looking  out  on  his 
fields  of  tossing  wheat,  drenched  in  golden 


[83  ] 
sunlight,  exclaims,  "  Look,  is  n't  that  beau- 
tiful!" What  he  really  means  is:  "See 
there  the  promise  of  a  rich  harvest,  and  it  is 
mine."  If  the  fields  belonged  to  his  neigh- 
bor, his  feelings  towards  them  would  be 
quite  different.  No,  their  beauty  is  to  be 
seen  and  felt  only  by  him  whose  mind  is 
free  of  thoughts  of  personal  enrichment 
and  who  thus  can  perceive  the  harmony 
with  life  of  golden  sunshine  and  nature's 
abundant  gifts.  The  farmer  could  not  see 
beyond  the  material  and  its  value  to  him  as 
material.  But  beauty  lies  deeper  than  that, 
for  it  is  the  expression  of  spiritual  rela- 
tions. 

Two  men  are  riding  together  in  a  railway 
carriage.  As  the  train  draws  into  a  city, 
they  pass  a  little  group  of  tumble-down 
houses,  brown  and  gray,  a  heap  of  corners 
thrown  together.  One  man  thinks :  "  What 
dreary  lives  these  people  must  lead  who 
dwell  there."     The  other,  with  no  such 


[84] 
stirring  of  the  sympathy,  sees  a  wonder- 
ful "scheme"  in  grays  and  browns,  or  an 
expressive  composition  or  ordering  of  line. 
Neither  could  think  the  thoughts  of  the 
other  at  the  same  time  with  his  own.  One 
feels  a  practical  and  physical  reaction,  and 
he  cannot  therefore  at  that  moment  pene- 
trate to  the  meaning  of  these  things  for  the 
spirit ;  and  that  meaning  is  the  harmony 
which  they  express. 

From  the  tangle  of  daily  living  with  its 
conflict  of  interests  and  its  burden  of  prac- 
tical needs,  the  appreciator  turns  to  art  with 
its  power  to  chasten  and  to  tranquillize.  In 
art,  he  finds  the  revelation  in  fuller  mea- 
sure of  a  beauty  which  he  has  felt  but 
vaguely.  He  realizes  that  underlying  the 
external  chaos  of  immediate  practical  ex- 
perience rests  a  supreme  and  satisfying 
order.  Of  that  order  he  can  here  and  now 
perceive  but  little,  hemmed  in  as  he  is  by 
the  material  world,  whose  meaning  he  dis- 


[85] 
cerns  as  through  a  glass,  darkly.  Yet  he 
keeps  resolutely  on  his  way,  secure  in  his 
kinship  with  the  eternal  spirit,  and  re- 
warded by  momentary  glimpses  of  the 
"  broken  arcs  "  which  he  knows  will  in  the 
end  take  their  appointed  places  in  the  "per- 
fect round." 


THE  ARTIST 

Out  of  chaos,  order.  Man's  life  on  the 
earth  is  finite  and  fragmentary,  but  it  is 
the  constant  effort  of  his  spirit  to  bring  the 
scattering  details  of  momentary  experience 
into  an  enduring  harmony  with  his  person- 
ality and  with  that  supreme  unity  of  which 
he  is  a  part. 

The  man  who  out  of  the  complex  disar- 
ray of  his  little  world  effects  a  new  har- 
mony is  an  artist.  He  who  fashioned  the 
first  cup,  shaping  it  according  to  his  ideal, 
— for  no  prototype  existed, — and  in  re- 
sponse to  his  needs ;  he  who,  taking  this 
elementary  form,  wrought  upon  it  with 
his  fingers  and  embellished  it  according  to 


[87] 
his  ideal  and  in  response  to  his  need  of  ex- 
pressing himself;  he,  again,  who  out  of  the 
same  need  for  expression  adds  to  the  cup 
anything  new :  each  of  these  workmen  is 
an  artist.  The  reproduction  of  already 
existing  forms,  with  no  modification  by 
the  individual  workman,  is  not  art.  So,  for 
example,  only  that  painter  is  an  artist  who 
adds  to  his  representation  of  the  visible 
world  some  new  attribute  or  quality  born 
of  his  own  spirit.  Primitive  artisan,  crafts- 
man, painter,  each  creates  in  that  he  reveals 
and  makes  actual  some  part,  which  before 
was  but  potential,  of  the  all-embracing  life. 
As  the  artist,  then,  wins  new  reaches  of 
experience  and  brings  them  into  unity,  he 
reveals  new  beauty,  new  to  men  yet  world- 
old.  For  the  harmony  which  he  effects  is 
new  only  in  the  sense  that  it  was  not  before 
perceived.  As,  in  the  physical  universe,  not 
an  atom  of  matter  through  the  ages  is  cre- 
ated or  destroyed,  so  the  supreme  spiritual 


[88] 

life  is  constant  in  its  sum  and  complete.  Of 
this  life  individuals  partake  in  varying  mea- 
sure ;  their  growth  is  determined  by  how 
much  of  it  they  make  their  own.  The 
growth  of  the  soul  in  this  sense  is  not  dif- 
ferent from  man's  experience  of  the  physi- 
cal world.  The  child  is  born :  he  grows  up 
into  his  family;  the  circle  widens  to  include 
neighbors  and  the  community;  the  circle 
widens  again  as  the  boy  goes  away  to  school 
and  then  to  college.  With  ever- widening 
sweep  the  outermost  bound  recedes,  though 
still  embracing  him,  as  he  reaches  out  to 
Europe  and  at  length  compasses  the  earth, 
conquering  experience  and  bringing  its 
treasures  into  tribute  to  his  own  spirit. 
The  things  were  there;  but  for  the  boy 
each  was  in  turn  created  as  he  made  it  his 
own.  So  the  artist,  revealing  new  aspects 
of  the  supreme  unity,  creates  in  the  sense 
that  he  makes  possible  for  his  fellows  a 
fuller  taking-up  of  this  life  into  themselves. 


[89] 

It  may  be  said  that  he  is  the  greatest 
artist  who  has  felt  the  most  of  harmony  in 
life, — the  greatest  artist  but  potentially. 
The  beauty  he  has  perceived  must  in  ac- 
cordance with  our  human  needs  find  ex- 
pression concretely,  because  it  is  only  as 
he  manifests  himself  in  forms  which  we 
can  understand  that  we  are  able  to  re- 
cognize him.  Though  a  mute,  inglorious 
Milton  were  Milton  still,  yet  our  human 
limitations  demand  his  utterance  that  we 
may  know  him.  So  the  artist  accomplishes 
his  mission  when  he  communicates  himself. 
The  human  spirit  is  able  to  bring  the  su- 
preme life  into  unity  with  itself  according 
to  the  measure  of  its  own  growth  made 
possible  through  expression. 

The  supreme  life,  of  which  every  created 
thing  partakes,  —  the  stone,  the  flower,  the 
animal,  and  man,— is  beauty,  because  it  is 
the  supreme  harmony  wherein  everything 
has  its  place  in  relation  to  every  other  thing. 


[9°  3 

This  central  unity  has  its  existence  in  ex- 
pression. The  round  earth,  broken  off  from 
the  stellar  system  and  whirling  along  its 
little  orbit  through  space,  is  yet  ever  in 
communication  with  the  great  system ;  the 
tree,  with  its  roots  in  the  earth,  puts  forth 
branches,  the  branches  expand  into  twigs, 
the  twigs  burst  into  leaves  whose  veins 
reach  out  into  the  air;  out  of  the  twigs 
spring  buds  swelling  into  blossoms,  the 
blossoms  ripen  into  fruit,  the  fruit  drops 
seed  into  the  earth  which  gave  it  and 
springs  up  into  new  trees.  The  tree  by 
its  growth,  which  is  the  putting  forth  of 
itself  or  expression,  develops  needs,  these 
needs  are  satisfied,  and  the  satisfying  of 
the  needs  is  the  condition  of  its  continued 
expansion. 

Man,  too,  has  his  existence  in  expres- 
sion. By  growth  through  expression, 
which  is  the  creation  of  a  new  need,  he  is 
enabled  to  take  up  more  into  himself ;  he 


[9i  ] 

brings  more  into  the  unity  of  his  person- 
ality, and  thus  he  expands  into  the  univer- 
sal harmony. 

The  unity  which  underlies  the  cosmos 
— to  define  once  more  the  conception 
which  is  the  basis  of  the  preceding  chap- 
ters—  is  of  the  spirit.  The  material  world 
which  we  see  and  touch  is  but  the  symbol 
and  bodying  forth  of  spiritual  relations. 
The  tranquillizing,  satisfying  power  of  art 
is  due  to  the  revelation  which  art  accom- 
plishes of  a  spiritual  harmony  which  tran- 
scends the  seeming  chaos  of  instant  expe- 
rience. So  it  comes  about  that  harmony, 
or  beauty,  which  is  of  the  spirit,  is  appre- 
hended by  the  spirit.  That  faculty  in  the 
artist  by  which  he  is  able  to  perceive  beauty 
is  called  temperament.  By  temperament  is 
to  be  understood  the  receptive  faculty,  the 
power  to  feel,  the  capacity  for  sensations, 
emotions,  and  "  such  intellectual  apprehen- 
sions as,  in  strength  and  directness  and 


[9*] 
their  immediately  realized  values  at  the 
bar  of  an  actual  experience,  are  most  like 
sensations . '  *  The  function  of  temperament 
is  to  receive  and  to  transmit,  to  interpret,  to 
create  in  the  sense  that  it  reveals.  In  the 
result  it  is  felt  to  be  present  only  as  the 
medium  through  which  the  forces  behind 
it  come  to  expression. 

Art,  the  human  spirit,  temperament,  — 
these  terms  are  general  and  abstract.  Now 
the  abstract  to  be  realized  must  be  made 
concrete.  Just  as  art,  in  order  to  be  mani- 
fest, must  be  embodied  in  the  particular 
work,  as  the  statue,  the  picture,  the  build- 
ing, the  drama,  the  symphony,  so  the  hu- 
man spirit  becomes  operative  in  the  person 
of  the  individual,  and  temperament  may 
be  best  studied  in  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual artist. 

As  temperament  is  the  receptive  faculty, 
the  artist's  attitude  toward  life  is  what 
Wordsworth  called  "wise  passiveness," — 


I  93  ] 
Wordsworth,  the  poet  of  "impassioned 
contemplation."  Keats,  too,  —  and  among 
the  poets,  whose  vision  of  beauty  was  more 
beautiful,  whose  grasp  on  the  truth  more 
true? — characterizes  himself  as  "addicted 
to  passiveness."  It  is  of  temperament  that 
Keats  is  writing  when  he  says  in  a  letter : 
"That  quality  which  goes  to  form  a  man 
of  achievement,  especially  in  literature, 
and  which  Shakespeare  possessed  so  enor- 
mously, is  Negative  Capability"  In  another 
letter  he  writes  : — 

"It  has  been  an  old  comparison  for  our  urging 
on — the  Beehive ;  however,  it  seems  to  me  that 
we  should  rather  be  the  flower  than  the  Bee  — 
for  it  is  a  false  notion  that  more  is  gained  by 
receiving  than  giving  —  no,  the  receiver  and  the 
giver  are  equal  in  their  benefits.  The  flower,  I 
doubt  not,  receives  a  fair  guerdon  from  the  Bee 
—  its  leaves  blush  deeper  in  the  next  spring  — 
and  who  shall  say  between  Man  and  Woman 
which  is  the  most  delighted*?  Now  it  is  more 
noble  to  sit  like  Jove  than  to  fly  like  Mercury 


[94] 

—  let  us  not  therefore  go  hurrying  about  and 
collecting  honey,  bee-like  buzzing  here  and 
there  impatiently  from  a  knowledge  of  what  is 
to  be  aimed  at ;  but  let  us  open  our  leaves  like 
a  flower  and  be  passive  and  receptive  —  bud- 
ding patiently  under  the  eye  of  Apollo  and  tak- 
ing hints  from  every  noble  insect  that  favours 
us  with  a  visit  —  sap  will  be  given  us  for  meat 
and  dew  for  drink.  .  .  . 

"  O  fret  not  after  knowledge  —  I  have  none, 
And  yet  my  song  comes  native  with  the  warmth. 
O  fret  not  after  knowledge  —  I  have  none, 
And  yet  the  Evening  listens.    He  who  saddens 
At  thought  of  idleness  cannot  be  idle, 
And  he 's  awake  who  thinks  himself  asleep." 

Still  again  he  says  :  "  The  Genius  of  Po- 
etry must  work  out  its  own  salvation  in  a 
man:  It  cannot  be  matured  by  law  and 
precept,  but  by  sensation  and  watchfulness 
in  itself.  That  which  is  creative  must  cre- 
ate itself." 

A  nature  so  constituted,  a  nature  recep- 
tive and  passive,  is  necessarily  withdrawn 


[95] 
from  practical  affairs.  To  revert  to  Keats 
as  an  example,  for  Keats  is  so  wholly  the 
artist,  it  is  his  remoteness  from  the  daily 
life  about  him  that  makes  him  the  man  of 
no  one  country  or  time.  His  poetry  has  a 
kind  of  universality,  but  universality  within 
a  definite  sphere,  and  that  sphere  is  the 
world  of  things  lovely  and  fair.  In  a  play- 
ful mood  Keats  writes  to  his  sister :  "  Give 
me  Books,  fruit,  French  wine  and  fine 
weather  and  a  little  music  out  of  doors, 
played  by  somebody  I  do  not  know  .  .  . 
and  I  can  pass  a  summer  very  quietly  with- 
out caring  much  about  Fat  Louis,  fat  Re- 
gent or  the  Duke  of  Wellington.,,  These 
are  trivial  words ;  but  they  serve  to  de- 
fine in  some  measure  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment. 

For  this  characteristic  remoteness  from 
affairs  the  artist  is  sometimes  reproached 
by  those  who  pin  their  faith  to  material 
things.     Such  are  not  aware  that  for  the 


[96] 

artist  the  only  reality  is  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
The  artist,  as  Carlyle  says  of  the  Man  of 
Letters,  "lives  in  the  inward  sphere  of 
things,  in  the  True,  Divine  and  Eternal, 
which  exists  always,  unseen  to  most,  under 
the  Temporary,  Trivial:  his  being  is  in 
that."  Temperament  constitutes  the  whole 
moral  nature  of  the  artist.  "  With  a  great 
poet/'  says  Keats,  "the  sense  of  beauty 
overcomes  every  consideration,  or  rather 
obliterates  all  consideration."  It  is  the 
standard  which  measures  the  worth  of  any 
act.  It  is  conscience,  too;  for  the  functions 
performed  by  conscience  in  the  normal 
moral  life  of  the  man  of  action  are  fulfilled 
by  the  artist's  devotion  to  his  ideal;  his 
service  to  his  art  is  his  sole  and  sufficient 
obligation. 

And  where  the  man  of  action  looks  to 
find  his  rewards  in  the  approval  of  his  fel- 
low men,  the  artist  cares  to  please  himself. 
The  very  act  of  expressing  is  itself  the  joy 


[97] 
and  the  reward.  To  this  truth  Keats  again 
stands  as  witness:  "I  feel  assured/'  he 
says,  "  I  should  write  from  the  mere  yearn- 
ing and  fondness  I  have  for  the  beautiful, 
even  if  my  night's  labours  should  be  burnt 
every  Morning  and  no  eye  ever  shine  upon 
them."  And  still  again :  "  I  value  more 
the  privilege  of  seeing  great  things  in  lone- 
liness than  the  fame  of  a  prophet."  Not 
that  the  artist  does  not  crave  appreciation. 
His  message  fails  of  completeness  if  there 
is  no  ear  to  hear  it,  if  it  does  not  meet  a 
sympathy  which  understands.  But  the  true 
artist  removes  all  shadow  of  petty  vanity 
and  becomes,  in  Whitman's  phrase,  "  the 
free  channel  of  himself."  He  is  but  the 
medium  through  whom  the  spirit  of  beauty 
reveals  itself;  in  thankfulness  and  praise  he 
but  receives  and  transmits.  That  it  is  given 
him  to  see  beauty  and  to  interpret  it  is 
enough. 

It  is  by  virtue  of  his  power  to  feel  that 


[98] 

the  artist  is  able  to  apprehend  beauty ;  his 
temperament  is  ever  responsive  to  new 
harmonies.  By  force  of  his  imagination, 
which  is  one  function  of  his  temperament, 
he  sends  his  spirit  into  other  lives,  absorbs 
their  experience  and  makes  it  his  own,  and 
ultimately  identifies  himself  with  world 
forces  and  becomes  creator.  In  a  lyric 
passage  in  a  letter  Keats  exclaims :  — 

"  The  mighty  abstract  Idea  I  have  of  Beauty 
in  all  things  stifles  the  more  divided  and  minute 
domestic  happiness.  ...  I  feel  more  and  more 
every  day,  as  my  imagination  strengthens,  that 
I  do  not  live  in  this  world  alone,  but  in  a  thou- 
sand worlds.  No  sooner  am  I  alone  than  shapes 
of  epic  greatness  are  stationed  around  me,  and 
serve  my  Spirit  the  office  which  is  equivalent 
to  a  King's  body-guard  —  then  '  Tragedy  with 
sceptered  pall  comes  sweeping  by/  According 
to  my  state  of  mind  I  am  with  Achilles  shout- 
ing in  the  Trenches,  or  with  Theocritus  in  the 
Vales  of  Sicily.  Or  I  throw  my  whole  being 
into  Troilus,  and  repeating  those  lines,  *  I  wan- 
der like  a  lost  soul  upon  the  Stygian  Banks  stay- 


l99~\ 

ing  for  wattage,'  I  melt  into  the  air  with  a  volup- 
tuousness so  delicate  that  I  am  content  to  be 
alone." 

This  power  to  penetrate  and  to  identify 
was  exercised  with  peculiar  directness  and 
plenitude  by  Walt  Whitman,  prophet  of 
the  omnipotence  of  man.  To  find  the 
burden  of  his  message  formulated  in  the 
single  phrase  one  may  turn  to  his  Poems 
quite  at  random. 

"  My  spirit  has  pass'd  in  compassion  and  deter- 
mination around  the  whole  earth." 

"  I  inhale  great  draughts  of  space, 
The  east  and  the  west  are  mine,  and  the  north 
and  the  south  are  mine. 

All  seems  beautiful  to  me." 

Of  the  artist  may  be  affirmed  what  Whit- 
man affirms  of  the  Answerer:  — 

*  Every  existence  has  its  idiom,  every  thing  has 
an  idiom  and  tongue, 


[  IO°  ] 

He  resolves  all  tongues  into  his  own  and  be- 
stows it  upon  men,  and  any  man  trans- 
lates, and  any  man  translates  himself 
also, 

One  part  does  not  counteract  another  part,  he 
is  the  joiner,  he  sees  how  they  join." 

As  the  artist  sends  out  his  spirit  through 
the  world,  as  he  becomes  the  channel  of 
universal  and  divine  influences,  so  he  is 
admitted  to  new  and  ever  new  revelations 
of  beauty.  And  stirred  by  the  glorious 
vision,  he  brings  that  beauty  to  earth,  com- 
municating it  to  his  fellows  and  making 
them  partakers  of  it,  as  he  gives  his  feel- 
ing expression.  Thus  finding  utterance  as 
the  prophet  of  God,  he  consummates  his 
mission  and  takes  his  place  in  the  world 
order.  Herein  he  has  his  being,  for  life 
is  expression;  and  each  new  harmony 
which  he  makes  manifest  is. the  medium 
of  his  fuller  identification  with  the  univer- 
sal life. 


ioi  :     '  ;,  »  i  -; 

So  it  is  that  the  artist  is  the  supreme 
interpreter,  the  mediator  between  man  and 
beauty.  His  work  is  a  work  of  joy,  of 
gratitude,  of  worship.  He  is  the  happy 
servant  of  God,  His  prophet,  through 
whom  He  declares  Himself  to  the  children 
of  men. 


Electrotyped  and printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &*  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


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